The microbes inhabiting urban environments present long-overlooked sources of information about infrastructure status, human health, and ecosystem health. Advances in NextGen DNA sequencing technology have enabled the rapid acquisition of terabytes of genomic data from urban environments, however, adequate methods for sampling, modeling, and data analysis are required to gain insights useful for engineering applications. In this presentation, we will discuss efforts utilizing microbes in sewage and drinking water to monitor public health and the water pipelines. We will also discuss efforts to explore microbiomes as resources to expand the conservation biology toolset at the boundary of built and natural environments. Taken together, these studies show that understanding generalizable and system-specific determinants of bacterial communities will create new ways for improving engineering design and urban environments.
Fangqiong Ling is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Before joining WU, Ling earned her Ph.D. degree from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and completed her postdoctoral training at MIT. Works from the research group that Dr. Ling leads have been recognized by the RSC ESWRT Journal (Best Emerging Investigator paper, 2022), the National Science Foundation CAREER award (2021), the ISME/IWA Biocluster Rising Star Award (2020), the Powe Award for Junior Faculty Enhancement by the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (2019), among other accolades. Dr. Ling serves as an associate editor of Water Research and an editorial board member of ISME Communications.