Megan Lott, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Environmental Health Science, will defend her doctoral dissertation –  “Toilet Talk: Evaluating Tools of the Trade in Wastewater-Based Epidemiology ” – on Tuesday, November 8 at 11:00 a.m. in room 29 of the Ecology Building on the UGA’s South Canpus. To join via Zoom, please email Megan at megan.lott @uga.edu.

Megan Lott is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Georgia. As a public health microbiologist, Megan is interested in understanding the interactions between humans and microbes in their shared environments. Megan’s dissertation research focuses on the application of wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Wastewater-based epidemiology has proven to be an effective approach for monitoring the transmission or emergence of infectious agents at a community scale. Given the complexity of the wastewater matrix, workflows for wastewater surveillance require considerable optimization for accurate detection, quantification, and genomic enrichment of viral genomes. In this work, Megan investigates tools for the cost-efficient and accurate monitoring of both viral titers and circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater.

Advisory Committee Members:
Erin Lipp, Ph.D. (Major Professor)
Travis Glenn, Ph.D.
Franklin Leach, Ph.D.
Elizabeth Ottesen Ph.D.

Everyone is welcome to attend! For more information, contact Darien Bush.