Monica Emelko

Monica B. Emelko is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Director of the Water Science, Technology & Policy Group. She is also cross-appointed in Biology, Geography & Environmental Management, Systems Design Engineering, and the School of Planning.

Professor Emelko's research interests focus on drinking water supply and treatment, source water protection, microbial risk assessment, and stormwater and advanced wastewater treatment. She focuses on sustainable technology development and deployment, integrated resource management, climate change adaptation, and the protection of public health. Professor 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 Alberta Innovates.

She co-leads 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 eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Professor Emelko's team was among the first cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for identifying climate change-associated threats from wildfire to drinking water security through water quality and treatability. Her ongoing work involves active participation from over 3 dozen utilities and conservation authorities across Canada and the United States. Professor Emelko has served as a technical advisor to the U.S. National Academies of Engineering, Science, and Medicine as well as several 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 2015, 2016, 2017
• CIVE 224 - Probability and Statistics
  • Taught in 2015
• CIVE 770 - Topics in Environmental Engineering
  • Taught in 2016
• ENVE 224 - Probability and Statistics
  • Taught in 2019

• 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