Engineering Microbiomes: Insights from Drinking Water and Indoor Air

Associate Professor,

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,

Case Western Reserve University

Recent advances in big data and high-throughput gene sequencing techniques have expanded our understanding of microbial communities and their centrality to human health and environmental processes. With this improved understanding, there is increasing interest in intelligently and robustly engineering beneficial microbiomes. In this presentation, I will share details from two areas that demonstrate how a big data approach can lead to new insights about microbial communities. I will begin by presenting my work on the fungal communities of the built environment, demonstrating how gene expression can connect fungal exposure in buildings with human health and how machine learning can distinguish between the fungal community signature of homes with and without mold damage. I will then present my research uncovering the parameters shaping viral diversity and infection networks in drinking water distribution systems, including my work optimizing the identification of viral sequences from complex metagenomic datasets. I will conclude the talk with a discussion of the research needed to further this work and intentionally tailor microbiomes to promote human and environmental health.

Bridget Hegarty is an assistant professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Case Western Reserve University. Before coming to CWRU, Dr. Hegarty was a postdoc at the University of Michigan. She earned her PhD in Environmental Engineering from Yale University (2019) and graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in Biological Engineering (2013). Dr. Hegarty’s research focuses on understanding the microbial communities of engineered environments, particularly indoor air and drinking water, to ensure human and environmental health. In conjunction with her research, she also seeks to reduce barriers to groups historically excluded from STEM. Dr. Hegarty is an advisor for gradSWE at CWRU; and as a postdoc, she designed and crowdfunded a wearable STEM education kit, the SpinWheel, to raise money for engineering outreach.