Researcher Profile: Meet Lewis Alcott

Lewis Alcott is a postdoctoral fellow in the Ecohydrology Research Group at the University of Waterloo. The lab is run by Professor Philippe Van Cappellen who is the Principal Investigator on the Microplastics Fingerprinting project.

The Microplastics Fingerprinting project team consists of over 30 faculty members, masters and PhD students, and support staff from various disciplinary backgrounds. We recognize this diversity as a strength that enables an interdisciplinary and holistic evaluation of the challenges and solutions associated with microplastics. Each issue of our newsletter will feature one of the project’s excellent researchers.   ​

Lewis Alcott collaborates and operates across the Microplastic Fingerprinting work packages to aid in the development of microplastics models at the regional and Great Lakes watershed scales. Through these models, we hope to gain new insights about the sources of microplastics to the Great Lakes and their ultimate fate, such as whether they tend to end up in lake sediments, suspended in the water column, or transported downstream to other water bodies. Lewis draws on expertise and knowledge from members across the project in order to develop these models, which may help us understand how microplastic abundances in smaller water bodies upscale to larger populated regions.

 Lewis received his Masters in Geoscience from Keele University, UK, and his PhD from the University of Leeds, UK.  His work is primarily centred on global and regional environmental change. including nutrient and greenhouse gas abundances. Lewis’ expertise in upscaling models allows him to contribute to this project by helping the team better understand the large-scale implications of microplastic pollution from regional downstream sources. This will be critical information for decision makers who are trying to identify effective remediation strategies.