CAEE Seminar: Pathogens as Pollutants - Advancing Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment

The Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering department and Dr. Gongkang Fu will be hosting a seminar featuring Professor of Environmental Engineering, Head, Department of Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering, Drexel University, Charles N Haas, L.D. Betz. The topic of the seminar will be Pathogens as Pollutants: Advancing Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment.

Abstract

We live in a microbial world; indeed by recent estimates the human body contains more microbial cells than human cells. Some of these microorganisms are pathogenic. Over the past 25+ years, a basis of knowledge to estimate the relationship between exposure to microorganisms and the likelihood of infection and disease has been developed by my research group and collaborators. At a gross level, there is a simple stochastic model that can be developed. However as we incorporate finer grained details of host anatomy, physiology and immunology, and _finer grained details of pathogen dynamics, it may be possible to develop predictive models to assess the risk from a newly emerged pathogen. In this talk, I will go over the historical development of QMRA (quantitative microbial risk assessment), talk about recent work in our lab on dynamic models, and discuss where the field might benefit from coupling with information from other fields of study including epidemiology (such as study of outbreaks, for example the 1993 Milwaukee Cryptosporidium outbreak), molecular biology, fluid dynamics, and immunology.