Manure and biosolid application are important resource recovery pathways that return nutrients and organic carbon to soil to improve crop yields and limit the need for carbon-intensive synthesized fertilizers. However, biosolids and manure are sources of antimicrobial resistance genes and antimicrobial resistant bacteria. I am probing the complex and dynamic microbial communities in engineered resource recovery systems at wastewater treatment plants and dairy farms to evaluate how engineered interventions mitigate the spread of antimicrobial resistance genes through land application.

Laboratory and Population Sciences:  I apply culture-independent molecular tools to probe the community and antimicrobial resistant gene composition of fertilizer recovered from wastewater treatment and dairy farms, as Class B biosolids and lagoon-stabilized manure, respectively. I have evaluated the performance of DNA extraction kits at minimizing bias and delivering high-quality DNA for sequencing efforts. I am currently developing and using bioinformatics approaches to improve absolute quantification of antimicrobial resistance genes in complex environmental samples.

Population Sciences: I am working with a cohort of dairy farms across the Midwest, mid-Atlantic, and Northeast United Studies and a cohort of wastewater treatment plants in Southeastern Michigan. The two pilot studies with these cohorts will inform how much variability we see between the microbial ecology of treated biosolids and determine if there are certain resource recovery processes that reduce the AMR loading to the environment through land application.  

Mathematical Modeling:  I am developing a mathematical framework to define horizontal gene transfer (HGT) and study the role it plays in maintaining the stability of microbial communities. The goal of this research to evaluate when microbial communities are most susceptible to HGT and how to intervene and control horizontal gene transfer.