Drinking water source protection is essential for clean and safe drinking water. Microbial and chemical contaminants threaten drinking water sources around the world and tools are needed to ensure the safety of water. In this presentation, we will discuss the various new technologies available for protecting drinking water sources including real time monitoring and metagenomics. We will also describe how some of these tools were recently adopted for SARS-CoV-2 pandemic management through wastewater based epidemiology.
 

Biography

Eyerusalem Goitom is a Research Associate at the Polytechnique Montreal Department of Civil, Geological, and Mining Engineering, as part of the NSERC Industrial Chair in Drinking Water. Her research focuses on real-time monitoring of water quality as well as the effect of environmental conditions on the growth of harmful cyanobacteria and their toxic metabolites. She was involved in a Genome Québec and Genome Canada-funded research project on cyanobacterial blooms, an issue caused by the eutrophication of surface waters. With the arrival of the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, she joined the CentrEau-COVID pilot project: SARS-CoV-2 surveillance in Quebec, Canada. For the City of Montréal, she was the key person in charge of monitoring and analyzing water samples. She has over ten years of both field and laboratory-based research experience.