The paper "Molecular Analysis for Screening Human Bacterial Pathogens in Municipal Wastewater Treatment and Reuse" (Environmental Science & Technology, DOI: 10.1021/es502546t) developed new methodology for bacterial pathogen screening in wastewater, and applied this methodology to determine the fate of pathogens along the wastewater treatment process train.  The non-targeted pathogen detection methodology is essential to future work on pathogen quantification and subsequent quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) for treated water recycling scenarios. The paper was a multi-disciplinary effort coordinated through BEEL, bringing together expertise in molecular biology (Dr. Raji Kumaraswamy and MSc  student Yamrot Amha), bioinformatics (Dr. Andreas Henschel and Research Engineer M. Zohaib Anwar), and wastewater treatment (Drs. Jorge Rodriguez and Farrukh Ahmad).

The second paper, "Using multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) for oilfield produced water treatment with environmentally acceptable endpoints" (Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts, DOI: 10.1039/C4EM00201F) evaluated the effectiveness of MWNTs in removing organic pollutants from crude oil-contaminated water at different salinities.  The environmentally-acceptable endpoint chosen for the treatment was the removal of common carcinogens and other toxins such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzenes, xylenes, and naphthalene. The paper was authored by Qammer Zaib (PhD student), Oluwajinmi (“Jimi”) Aina (former BEEL member, currently a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto) and Dr. Farrukh Ahmad.