Profile

My dog Sydney

I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania U.S.A. I have been married 8 years to my husband, Tom. We have a 7 year old son, a 6 year old daughter, and a 11 year old chubby dachshund.

Our family LOVES hockey (let’s go pens!) and playing pinball! There is a local arcade dedicated to pinball alone and they have at least 10 different pinball machines at any given time.

In acidic mine drainage, the water often appears a vibrant blue due to metals reacting with the limestone

Biofilms can even grow in the winter, when it is very cold.

Lowber Passive Remediation System in southwestern Pennsylvania

Extensive algae growth at a passive remediation system. Algae can grow in very poor conditions.

Me standing in front of a pile of iron hydroxide that had been removed from a bottom of a pond.

Lowber Passive System in the winter time

When iron is removed from solution it forms iron hydroxides that come out bright orange. This is often referred to as “yellow boy”

Bioremediation is the study of any biological organism in the context of remediation (cleaning or restoring the environment). Biological organisms can be anything from plants to bacteria and restoration can be replacing damaged soil so that plants/trees can grow or removing contamination, such as lead or oil, from water. Did you know that microorganisms can actually “eat” oil from oil spills saving the oceans and the wildlife that live in it? I study streams and creeks that are polluted with coal mine drainage. Mine drainage is a result of industrial digging of coal that leads to water with low pH (acidic like orange juice) and metals such as iron and aluminum. These waters kill all of the fish and insects that typically live in them and often make them bright orange (they call this “yellow boy”). Despite fish and insects being unable to live in these environments, bacteria can still live and in fact can actually help to restore the water. I study how to encourage these good bacteria to grow so that we can more quickly clean the water and restore it to the condition it was previously.

Other bacteria form biofilms, like this cloud-forming biofilm here

Biofilms often form into tight balls to protect themselves from harm.

I grow bacteria in the lab that was collected from sites like shown above. The bacteria often cluster together to protect themselves. This results in pictures displayed here, yes that looks like a cloud and dippin’ dots but it is in fact bacteria! I then take the bacteria and place it in mine drainage to see if it can remediate the water. Through a series of colorimetric assays, where I measure changes in color, I can determine if the bacteria are decreasing or increasing the metals in the water.