Monica Emelko

Monica B. Emelko is an Associate Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at the University of Waterloo, where she is also cross-appointed in the School of Planning.

Dr. Emelko is the Director of the Water Science and Technology Group at UWaterloo, where her research interests are concentrated on drinking water supply and treatment. She focuses on sustainable technology development and deployment, integrated resource management, climate change, and the protection of public health. Dr. Emelko’s research is currently funded by many organizations including the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and the Canadian Water Network (CWN).

She is a member of the Southern Rockies Watershed Project team, which evaluates the initial effects of natural disturbance by wildfire on hydrology, water quality, and aquatic ecology; and monitors the recovery of these values in front range headwater streams of the high water yielding Oldman River basin in Alberta. Her ongoing work involves active participation from over 3 dozen utilities and conservation authorities across Canada and the United States. Currently, Dr. Emelko is acting as a technical advisor to federal and provincial/state agencies in Canada, the United States, and Australia regarding regulatory development related to drinking water treatment, source water protection, and integrated resource management.

• Water Treatment
• Wildfire
• Water Quality
• Pathogens
• Climate Change
• Filtration
• Land Disturbance
• Environmental & Water Resources
• Water And Land Management
• Nanoparticle Removal During Drinking Water And Wastewater Treatment
• Quanititative Microbial Risk Assessment
• Water Protection
• Smart Infrastructure

• 2001, Doctorate, Civil Engineering, University of Waterloo
• 1995, Master's, Civil Engineering, UCLA
• 1994, Bachelor's, Environmental Engineering Science, MIT
• 1993, Bachelor's, Chemical Engineering, MIT

• CIVE 670 - Physico-Chemical Processes of Water and Wastewater Treatment
  • Taught in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017
• CIVE 770 - Topics in Environmental Engineering
  • Taught in 2014, 2016
• CIVE 224 - Probability and Statistics
  • Taught in 2015

• Silins, Uldis and Anderson, Axel and Bladon, Kevin D and Emelko, Monica B and Stone, Micheal and Spencer, Sheena A and Williams, Chris HS and Wagner, Michael J and Martens, Amanda M and Hawthorn, Kirk, Southern Rockies Watershed Project, The Forestry Chronicle, 92(1), 2016, 39 - 42
• Robinne, François-Nicolas and Miller, Carol and Parisien, Marc-André and Emelko, Monica B and Bladon, Kevin D and Silins, Uldis and Flannigan, Mike, A global index for mapping the exposure of water resources to wildfire, Forests, 7(1), 2016
• Jin, Chao and Ren, Carolyn L and Emelko, Monica B, Concurrent Modeling of Hydrodynamics and Interaction Forces Improves Particle Deposition Predictions, Environmental science & technology, 50(8), 2016, 4401 - 4412
• Kazemzadeh, Farnoud and Jin, Chao and Molladavoodi, Sara and Mei, Yu and Emelko, Monica B and Gorbet, Maud B and Wong, Alexander, Lens-free spectral light-field fusion microscopy for contrast-and resolution-enhanced imaging of biological specimens, Optics letters, 40(16), 2015, 3862 - 3865
• Emelko, Monica B and Stone, Micheal and Silins, Uldis and Allin, Don and Collins, Adrian L and Williams, Chris HS and Martens, Amanda M and Bladon, Kevin D, Sediment-phosphorus dynamics can shift aquatic ecology and cause downstream legacy effects after wildfire in large river systems, Global change biology, 2015