Hotel Grand Chancellor, Brisbane, Australia
Keynote Speakers
Per Halkjær Nielsen
Per Halkjær Nielsen is heading the multidisciplinary Center for Microbial Communities at Aalborg University, Denmark. He has a background in Environmental Microbiology, Chemistry and Engineering and has been active in environmental biotechnology for over 25 years. The main focus has been microbial ecology of biological wastewater treatment systems, bioenergy production and recovery of nutrients. He has been among the pioneers in the development and implementation of the new DNA sequencing technologies in the water engineering field, and has studied in great detail community composition and ecophysiology of process-critical members. He launched the MiDAS project in 2006, now grown to MiDAS Global, an open online microbiology resource for everyone working in the wastewater treatment and anaerobic digestion area to provide a unifying reference database. He has been active in the IWA specialist group “Activated sludge population dynamics, ASPD” since 1989 and was chairman from 2005 to 2013 during which its focus broadened and the name changed to “Microbial Ecology and Water Engineering, MEWE”. Presently, he is chairing the IWA BioCluster and active in the IWA Strategic Council. He has published more than 350 peer-reviewed papers and received many awards for his contributions, including the Ardern Lockett Award and the Order of the Dannebrog from the Danish Queen.
Krista Rule Wigginton
Dr. Krista Rule Wigginton is an associate professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining the faculty at UM, she was an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, College Park from 2011-2012. Her research focuses on applications of environmental biotechnology in drinking water and wastewater treatment. In particular, her research group develops new methods to detect and analyze the fate of emerging pollutants in the environment. Dr. Wigginton received her B.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of Idaho, and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Environmental Engineering from Virginia Tech. After completing her Ph.D. degree, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland from 2008-2011.
Steven Robbins
Steven Robbins is an environmental microbiologist and bioinformatician at the Australian Centre for Ecogenomics (ACE) at the University of Queensland, where he uses meta-omic techniques to characterize the microbial communities associated with corals, marine sponges, and coral reef seawater to clarify their roles maintaining the health and stability of coral reefs.
His current research focus lies in using long read (Nanopore) sequencing to generate and analyse a comprehensive database of microorganisms from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR), including thousands of bacterial, archaeal, viral, plasmid, and eukaryote genomes, to be used in future reef management and research.
Steven received his B.S. degree from Kent State University and his PhD from the University of Queensland. He serves as co-organiser for the JAMS seminar series in Brisbane, which aims to connect microbiologists from across Brisbane in a relaxed atmosphere.
Conference Secretariat Sharon James
contact@mewe23.com @mewe2023