Heather N. Bischel

Congrats to UC Davis PhD student Mel Johnson for leading our latest publication on flow virometry in wastewater monitoring, just published in Viruses!

Mel’s research is part of a US EPA-sponsored study evaluating surrogate measures for viruses and virus removal in non-potable water reuse systems. He compared virus-like particle counts from flow virometry (FVM) with traditional coliphage cultures and PCR measurements for Pepper Mild Mottle Virus, CrAssphage, and Tomato Brown Rugose Fruit Virus—all at the UC Davis wastewater treatment plant. The article  is part of a special issue, Flow Virometry: A New Tool for Studying Viruses.

Mel will present this research at the Association of Environmental Engineering & Science Professors (AEESP) Research & Education Conference in May 2025.

In addition to researching viruses in wastewater, you can find Mel leading Society of Water & Environmental Graduate Students (SWEGS) at UC Davis as President, and teaching students in our capstone design class about wastewater treatment, resource recovery, and solids management.

Check out our paper here!

One thing I love about Fall quarter is the launch of projects (professional and personal) and welcoming new students to UC Davis.  This year I was pleased to welcome two new PhD students in the Microbiology Graduate Group (MGG) for a Fall quarter rotation!

Over 5 weeks, Miriam Lepiz and Jack Bartlett worked with postdoctoral researchers, Dr. Camille Wolfe and Dr. Wenting Li, and environmental engineering MS student Eduardo Baptista De Siqueira. The team has been working on our group’s NSF CAREER project to harness microbes in the guts of Black Soldier Fly Larvae to sequester and degrade contaminants.

The incoming MGG students will rotate in four research groups as part of their initial training and finding the right fit for a PhD project.

This year’s UC Davis annual Picnic Day on April 20, 2024 was crawling with curious kids, and insect larvae! Civil & Environmental Engineering Masters Student, Eduardo Siqueira, hosted a stand at the event, and spoke with hundreds of children and parents through the day.

Eduardo highlighted research underway as part of our National Science Foundation CAREER project. Our team is investigating how Black Soldier Fly Larvae (BSFL) can accelerate composting processes and generate valuable products from organic waste. We are studying how microorganisms and enzymes in the insect gut degrade contaminants.

Eduardo was impressed with engagement from kids and parents alike. Many found the BSFL quite amazing and were excited to take some red wrigglers for home composting. “I had brought enough supplies for about 100 ‘giveaways’, but before 1PM it was all gone.”  Next time we’ll prepare double!

Many of the kids wanted to see and touch some of the earthworms, and with parents permission, Eduardo would have the kids see and feel the earthworms.

We celebrated PhD graduations for Madison, Wenting, Olivia and Hannah and MS graduation for Linnea this week! Congratulations to this awesome team 🙂

I’m happy to share Olivia Wrightwood’s manuscript, which was recently published in Environmental Science & Technology – Water! Woodchip bioreactors are designed for nitrate removal from agricultural runoff. Olivia’s work evaluated the potential for pesticide removal in lab and field-scale woodchip reactors and aims more broadly to inform best management practices (BMPs) for in-field pesticide treatment. She used a combination of engineering strategies (designing and programming bioreactor controls), field skills (testing environmental conditions in an agricultural setting), and the scientific process (controlled kinetic batch studies) to investigate pesticide removal mechanisms and to ideate design strategies to improve pesticide removal. She found that removal of imidacloprid and diuron are driven by sorption to the woodchips, with a slight signature of microbial activity. She is now building on this work to promote microbial degradation of pesticides in field reactors by stimulating enzyme activity and enzymatic transformation of pesticides.