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Welcome back to UNC for Fall 2022! Below is a short description of the summer research activities of current Water Institute students who are entering their second year at UNC this fall.
Yarrow Linden
Yarrow spent the summer in Mozambique working on both the Maputo Sanitation (MapSan) trial and the PAASIM trial. In parallel to the child health outcome analysis, Yarrow was collecting large volume water samples for enteric pathogen analysis. She collected the water samples using Dead End Ultrafiltration and will analyze them in the Brown lab at UNC using TAC.
Anjerul Islam
Over the summer,as part of his PhD, Anjerul has started working with IHE-Delft and other partner organizations to identify different transmission pathways for pathogens and their quantified health risks at refugee settings in Bangladesh and Uganda and joined the inception conference in July. In addition, he has recently finished the secondary analysis of WHO recommended sanitary inspection data and their relationship with water quality when accounting for environmental factors like rainfall, water table depth etc. for three African countries. Also, Anjerul is performing title and abstract screening of toxic metal in drinking water as part of the diversified systematic review team.
Allison Lee
This summer, Allison has been working to model precipitation in North Carolina from rain gauge observations and satellite estimates. This work will inform inflow and infiltration experienced at wastewater treatment plants and corresponding sewer sheds throughout the state to better understand how rainfall impacts wastewater-based epidemiological monitoring. She has also been finishing a literature review on identifying adaptive strategies employed in low- and middle-income countries to enhance water security and resilience.
Rita Gyimah
Rita has worked mainly in the lab on COVID aerosol samples, mostly culturing viral cells, using the Double Agar Method. She has also been doing asystematic review for her Ph.D. The goal is to identify the knowledge gap around septic tanks and groundwater contamination. She is at the data extraction stage, hoping to finish by July.
Sarah Lebu
Sarah was awarded the Peacock summer fellowship by CFK Africa, an affiliate of UNC Chapel Hill. As part of the fellowship, she is spending the summer in Nairobi, Kenya conducting research to understand the impacts of extreme weather events on access and functionality of sanitation facilities in urban informal settlements. In her work, she hypothesizes that onsite sanitation systems are vulnerable to flooding, and under more severe conditions this may result in widespread spillage of fecal matter in the environment and contamination of drinking water supplies. Sarah's research is focused on using structured observation methods to examine existing hazards, risks and vulnerabilities related to rainfall variability and their impacts on sanitation.