Harnessing Microorganisms with Innovative Materials for Water, Food, Energy, and Health

Microorganisms in the environment play an important role in human lives: microbial metabolism can be used to treat our waste and generate useful products (e.g., food, medicine, and energy), while pathogenic microorganisms in our water and food can threaten human health. Developments of innovative materials help us to better harness microbial activities for human needs. In this presentation, I would like to talk about three examples about applying innovative materials for cultivation, inactivation, and detection of microorganisms, respectively. First, I will show a series of nano-enhanced 3D porous conducting materials, which can serve as high-performance bioelectrodes for colonization of exoelectrogens in microbial electrochemical systems. Second, I will introduce a chemical-free microbial inactivation approach named locally enhanced electric field treatment (LEEFT), which is an electrophysical method that relies on nanowire-enabled low-voltage electroporation to kill bacteria. The third, I will present new 3D filtration processes based on superabsorbent polymer (SAP) beads, which have been successfully applied to concentrate and preserve water samples for microbial quantification.

Speaker: Xing Xie, Georgia INstitute of Technology

Room: 101