Amy Sapkota

Recycled Water, Food Crop Irrigation, and Public Health: Exploring Sequencing Approaches to Advance Understanding of the Microbiological Risks of Water Reuse

Abstract

amy_sapkota_headshot.png

Climate change and population growth are crippling traditional freshwater resources (e.g., groundwater), leaving multiple world regions without enough water to grow adequate food for expanding populations. In the face of this agricultural and public health crisis, nations are looking to nontraditional irrigation water sources such as treated wastewater or recycled water to grow ample food. However, these water sources may contain microbiological, chemical and physical contaminants that could pose risks to soil health, crop yields, food safety, and public health. In addition, existing social, behavioral, economic and regulatory factors could impact not only the current use of recycled irrigation water sources but also the integration of emerging water treatment technologies that are being developed to treat these sources.

This seminar will cover how Amy Sapkota's group couples DNA-labeling and sequencing approaches to:

  • Further our understanding of the microbiological quality of reused water and irrigated crops; and

  • Refine the water treatment technologies that are being developed to ensure sustainable water reuse approaches.

About the Speaker

Amy Sapkota is a professor of environmental health at the University of Maryland School of Public Health and the director of CONSERVE: A Center of Excellence at the Nexus of Sustainable Water Reuse, Food & Health, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture. She is also the principal investigator of a new graduate training grant, UMD Global STEWARDS—funded by the National Science Foundation Research Traineeship program—which will prepare a cadre of future leaders focused on innovations at the nexus of food, energy and water systems.

Sapkota received her Ph.D. in environmental health sciences from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, her MPH in environmental health sciences from the Yale School of Public Health, and her bachelor’s degree in biological science from the University of Maryland. She completed her postdoc with the Environmental Microbial Genomics Group at Ecole Centrale de Lyon (Lyon, France). Sapkota's research interests lie in the areas of environmental microbiology, environmental microbial genomics and exposure assessment. Her projects evaluate the complex relationships between environmental microbial exposures and human infectious diseases, with a special focus on assessing the public health impacts associated with water reuse.