CEE 500 Seminar (1/5): Mari Winkler Thu, 3:30 (SMI 211)

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Dear CEE Commuity,

This week’s CEE 500 speaker is our own Mari Winkler. She will share her career story and talk about how she uses microbes to tackle pollution. Note that seminar location has changed to Smith Hall (at the Quad).

Title: Unlocking the power of microbes to tackle anthropogenic water, soil and air pollution

When/where: Thursday (1/5), 3:30. SMI (Smith Hall) 211.

Zoom: https://washington.zoom.us/j/96670347080

Dr. Winkler’s Bio:

Dr. Mari Winkler is a John R. Kiely Endowed Associate Professor in the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Washington (US). She studied at the University Duisburg Essen (DE) (Chemistry Department), at the University of British Columbia (CA) (Microbiology and Immunology Department), at Columbia University (US) (Earth and Environmental Engineering Department), and at The University of New South Wales (AU) in the Marine-Microbiology Department. She received her Ph.D. from the Environmental Biotechnology Department at Delft University of Technology (NL) and did Marie-Curie Postdoc at Ghent University (BE). She also worked as a sales manager (DE, AT) and as a consultant (NL) shaping her application-driven research.

Dr. Winkler received several prizes for her work (AEESP outstanding Ph.D. dissertation award, Paul L. Busch Award, Huber Technology prize, Jaap van de Graaf award, B-IWA industry award, ISME-IWA Biocluster award, and Rhurverband water award). Her curriculum includes industrial experience in the field of process engineering (NL) and sales management (DE, AT).

Her academic interests include microbial ecology of mixed culture communities, mathematical modeling of microbial interactions, and innovative wastewater and sludge treatment processes including Anammox, nDAMO, aerobic granular sludge, resource recovery, biosolids technology, SARS- CoV2 surveillance in the sewer. In addition, she is studying how climate change stressors impact the microbial community composition of wetlands and the associated capture and release of greenhouse gases. She is also working on enhancing kidney disease by developing gut-based therapeutics.