Civil & Environmental Engineering
Nadine Kotlarz
Nadine Kotlarz
Previous Institution:
Lehigh University (B.S. in Environmental Engineering); Dominican University (M.A. in Teaching); University of Michigan (M.S. in Environmental Engineering)
Current Research Project(s)
I study the impacts of chemical disinfection on the microbial communities in drinking water. My goal is to understand how disinfection processes applied at the water treatment plant impact the diversity of environmental mycobacteria in water sampled from homes, and whether household water is a source of opportunistic bacterial infections in individuals with cystic fibrosis.
The two research questions I am investigating for my dissertation are (1) How does disinfection impact populations of opportunistic pathogens, particularly nontuberculous Mycobacterium species, in drinking water? and (2) Is the increasing use of the drinking water disinfectant monochloramine contributing to an increasing incidence of opportunistic mycobacterial infections?
- Laboratory sciences: Using various analytical and molecular methods, I am sampling the microbial communities in a full-scale drinking water treatment plant that uses ozone and monochloramine disinfection to study how disinfection processes impact Mycobacterium species in drinking water.
- Population sciences: Using existing human health data from the University of Michigan Health System medical record, I am employing an epidemiological approach to investigate a possible association between opportunistic mycobacterial infection rates and disinfectant type in public water systems in the United States.