The project is led by principal investigator Lauren Sassoubre, assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering.

Sassoubre joined UB after receiving her doctorate from Stanford University in 2014. Here she is last month at Woodlawn Beach, just south of the wind turbines in the Town of Hamburg.

A popular spot for beachgoers on Lake Erie, Woodlawn was closed for roughly half of 2015 summer due to microbial pollution.

Sassoubre was joined by Hailie Suk, an environmental engineering major who is participating in UB’s Environmental Engineering Solutions for Pollution Prevention (EESPP) program, a 10-week National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program.

Suk holds a thermometer to measure water temperature.

Suk will be this year’s president of the UB chapter of Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW).

Co-principal investigators on the project are Gerald Koudelka, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Biological Sciences, and Christopher Lowry, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Geology.

Also participating in the research are, from left to right, Chimere Alozie, a civil engineering major and Thomas Glose, a PhD student in Lowry’s lab. Here, they use a pump to collect groundwater.

Alozie participates in the UB Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, a 10-week National Science Foundation summer research program that promotes science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

The research is supported by RENEW, an interdisciplinary institute at UB dedicated to solving pressing problems involving energy, the environment and water.

The team will use, among other things, next-generation DNA sequencing to assess the sources of microbial pollution at Woodlawn.

Alozie prepares to measure the concentration of bacteria in water at Sassoubre’s lab in Jarvis Hall on UB’s North Campus.