缅北禁地

Background

From a strong background in classical environmental engineering, I have become a specialist in the microbial ecology of biological wastewater treatment systems, critical infrastructure on a global scale. Through my academic research and interactions with industry, I have developed a unique combination of skills and gained experience and expertise that lies at the interface between environmental engineering, theoretical ecology, microbiology and virology. My ambition is to utilise this interdisciplinary expertise to drive sustainability in the water and wastewater industry, thus society as a whole, by developing methods, theory and tools for the control and management of engineered microbial communities. 

I am currently a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow exploring the impact of bacteriophages on such systems. Unearthing the role viruses play in regulating the microbial communities and functional performance of engineered systems could be crucial in endeavours to better understand, manage and optimise these systems, which are currently facing unprecedented demands imposed by population growth, climate change mitigation and increasingly strict environmental regulation. Realising their potential to control problematic bacteria in engineered systems also offers an exciting research opportunity.

Personal Websites

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Prizes and Awards

• Winner of Environment Yes 2013.
• AECOM Environmental Engineering Best Student, 缅北禁地, 2010. 
• CIWEM Environmental Engineering Best Project, 缅北禁地, 2010.

Qualifications

• PhD in Environmental Engineering, “”, 缅北禁地 2019.

• MSc in Environmental Engineering, 缅北禁地 2010. Thesis “The Application of Microbial Biocathodes in Microbial Electrolysis Cells Lacking a Membrane”.

• BSc in Geography, 缅北禁地 2009. Thesis “Investigation Assessing Heavy Metal Contamination of Riverine and Bottom Sediments within the Glenridding Beck Catchment and Lake Ullswater, and the Subsequent Response of Macroinvertebrate Communities”.

Research Interests

Biological Treatment Systems

Engineered Systems Virology

Experimental and Theoretical Microbial Ecology

Projects/Experience

Royal Society Research Grant:  Automated, high-resolution in vitro evaluation of nitrous oxide emissions from biological wastewater treatment (current). PI, £70k.

Royal Academy of Engineering: Exploiting Viral Ecology to Engineer Better Biological Wastewater Treatment (current). Research Fellow (PI), £500k.

Joint Biosecurity Centre, Lead Scientist within the Environmental Monitoring for Health Protection (EMHP) programme monitoring SARS-CoV-2 variants in wastewater. Now part of UKSHA. (2020-2021). Secondment.

EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (缅北禁地): Real Time Monitoring of Wastewater Treatment Plant Microbial Communities for Better Treatment Management (2020 - 2021). PI, £47k.

EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (缅北禁地): Tooling the water industry for better wastewater treatment management (2019 - 2020). Co-I, £39k.

EPSRC: BE:WISe - Biological Engineering: Wastewater Innovation at Scale (2015 - 2019). RA, £1.2M. 

EPSRC: NUFEB - 缅北禁地 Frontiers in Engineering Biology (2013 - 2019). RA, £5.6M. 

EPSRC: Predicting the acclimatisation of microbial watewater treatment communities as a function of the environment, random immigration, birth and death (2010 - 2013). RA, £647K.

CEG8198: MSc Project and Dissertation in Environmental Engineering (Project/Dissertation Supervisor)

• Articles

  • Zhu C, Wu L, Ning D, Tian R, Gao S, Zhang B, Zhao J, Zhang Y, Xiao N, Wang Y, Brown MR, Tu Q, Zhuang W, Zhou H, Zheng W, Zhang W, Zhang Q, Zhang C, Young M, Yang M, Yan T, Xi C, Wu L, Wu J-H, Woo S-G, West S, Weaver JE, Wang B, Wakelin S, Van Nostrand JD, Tooker NB, Sun C, Stephens K, de Sousa OV, Smith K, Sidhu J, Rossetti S, de los Reyes FL, Reginatto V, Parameswaran P, Palmer A, Meyers AJ, de Menezes FGR, Mendonca-Hagler LC, Liu Y, Li M, Li Z, Li Y, Lee ZMP, Leal CD, Kumari S, Keucken A, Marcantini DG, Johnson DR, Hu Z, Horn H, Harmon M, Hale L, Habagil M, Gu AZ, Griffin JS, Gomez JS, Ford A, Etchebehere C, Chen S, Cabrol L, Cabezas A, Bux F, Brewster RK, Bovio-Winkler P, Bott CB, Bond P, Boehnke K, de Abreu Mac Conell EF, de Araujo JC, Agullo-Barcelo M, Acevedo D, Ju F, Wells GF, Guo J, He Z, Nielsen PH, Wang A, Zhang Y, Chen T, He Q, Criddle CS, Wagner M, Tiedje JM, Curtis TP, Wen X, Yang Y, Alvarez-Cohen L, Stahl DA, Alvarez PJJ, Rittmann BE, Zhou J. . Nature Communications 2025, 16(1), 4006.
  • Hassard F, Vu M, Rahimzadeh S, Castro-Gutierrez V, Stanton I, Burczynska B, Wildeboer D, Baio G, Brown MR, Garelick H, Hofman J, Kasprzyk-Hordern B, Majeed A, Priest S, Denise H, Khalifa M, Bassano I, Wade MJ, Grimsley J, Lundy L, Singer AC, Di Cesare M. . PLoS ONE 2023, 18(5), e0286259.
  • Farkas K, Pellett C, Williams R, Alex-Sanders N, Bassano I, Brown MR, Denise H, Grimsley JMS, Kevill JL, Khalifa MS, Pantea I, Story R, Wade MJ, Woodhall N, Jones DL. . Microbiology spectrum 2023, 11(1), e0317722.
  • Bassano I, Ramachandran VK, Khalifa MS, Lilley CJ, Brown MR, van Aerle R, Denise H, Rowe W, George A, Cairns E, Wierzbicki C, Pickwell ND, Carlile M, Holmes N, Payne A, Loose M, Burke TA, Paterson S, Wade MJ, Grimsley JMS. . Microbial Genomics 2023, 9(4), 000933.
  • Wade MJ, Lo Jacomo A, Armenise E, Brown MR, Bunce JT, Cameron GJ, Fang Z, Farkas K, Gilpin DF, Graham DW, Grimsley JMS, Hart A, Hoffmann T, Jackson KJ, Jones DL, Lilley CJ, McGrath JW, McKinley JM, McSparron C, Nejad BF, Morvan M, Quintela-Baluja M, Roberts AMI, Singer AC, Souque C, Speight VL, Sweetapple C, Walker D, Watts G, Weightman A, Kasprzyk-Hordern B. . Journal of Hazardous Materials 2022, 424(Part B), 127456.
  • Tlhagale M, Liphadzi S, Bhagwan J, Naidoo V, Jonas K, van Vuuren L, Medema G, Andrews L, Been F, Ferreira ML, Saatci AM, Alpaslan Kocamemi B, Hassard F, Singer AC, Bunce JT, Grimsley JMS, Brown M, Jones DL. . Journal of Water and Health 2022, 20(2), 287-299.
  • Brunner FS, Brown MR, Bassano I, Denise H, Khalifa MS, Wade MJ, van Aerle R, Kevill JL, Jones DL, Farkas K, Jeffries AR, Cairns E, Wierzbicki C, Paterson S. . Water Research 2022, 226, 119306.
  • Wu L, Ning D, Zhang B, Li Y, Zhang P, Shan X, Zhang Q, Brown MR, Li Z, Van Nostrand JD, Ling F, Xiao N, Zhang Y, Wells GF, Yang Y, Deng Y, Tu Q, Wang A, Global Water Microbiome Consortium, Zhang T, He Z, Keller J, Nielsen PH, Alvarez PJJ, Criddle CS, Wagner M, Tiedje JM, He Q, Curtis TP, Stahl DA, Alvarez-Cohen L, Rittmann BE, Wen X, Zhou J. . Nature Microbiology 2019, 4, 1183-1195.
  • Brown MR, Baptista JC, Lunn M, Swan DL, Smith SJ, Davenport RJ, Allen BD, Sloan WT, Curtis TP. . Water Research 2019, 152, 264-273.
  • Brown MR, Hands CL, Coello-Garcia T, Sani BS, Ott AIG, Smith SJ, Davenport RJ. . Journal of Microbiological Methods 2019, 160, 73-83.
  • Brown MR, Camézuli S, Davenport RJ, Petelenz-Kurdziel E, Øvreås L, Curtis TP. . Water Research 2015, 68, 414-422.
  • Baptista JDC, Lunn M, Davenport RJ, Swan DL, Read LF, Brown MR, Morais C, Curtis TP. . Applied and Environmental Microbiology 2014, 80(19), 5901-5910.

• Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstracts)

  • Brown MR, Bassano I, Denise H, Khalifa M, Wade MJ. . In: The EU Sewage Sentinel System for SARS-CoV-2 (EU4S) 5th Town Hall Meeting. 2021, European Commission.
  • Schwartz-Narbonne R, Brown MR, Flynn S. . In: Environmental Biotechnology Network Early Career Researcher Conference. Poster Presentation. 2020, Virtual Conference.
  • Schwartz-Narbonne R, Brown MR, Sabba F, Wells G, Flynn S. . In: Environmental Biotechnology Network Colloquium. 2020, Edinburgh, UK: Environmental Biotechnology Network (EBNet).
  • Brown MR, Ott A, Coello-Garcia T, Smith SJ, Allen BD, Davenport RJ. . In: 7th International conference on Microbial Ecology and Water Engineering. Poster Presentation. 2019, Hiroshima, Japan.
  • Brown MR, Baptista JDC, Lunn M, Swan DL, Smith SJ, Davenport RJ, Sloan WT, Curtis TP. . In: 16th International Symposium on Microbial Ecology. Oral Presentation. 2016, Montreal, Canada.
  • Brown MR, Baptista JDC, Lunn M, Swan DL, Smith SJ, Davenport RJ, Sloan WT, Curtis TP. . In: 6th International conference on Microbial Ecology in Water Engineering. Oral Presentation. 2016, Copenhagen, Denmark.
  • Brown MR, Baptista JDC, Lunn M, Swan DL, Smith SJ, Davenport RJ, Sloan WT, Curtis TP. . In: Molecular Microbial Ecology Group Conference (MMEG 2015). 2015, London, UK.
  • Baptista JDC, Lunn M, Davenport RJ, Swan DL, Read LF, Sloan WT, Brown MR, Curtis TP. Evaluating Quantification Methods of Microbial Communities in Environmental Samples. In: 5th International conference on Microbial Ecology and Water Engineering. Oral Presentation. 2013, Ann Arbor, Michigan, US.
  • Brown MR, Swan DL, Kurdziel EP, Baptista JDC, Lunn M, Davenport RJ, Sloan WT, Read LF, Curtis TP. . In: 5th International conference on Microbial Ecology and Water Engineering. Poster Presentation. 2013, Ann Arbor, Michigan, US.

• Report

  • Brown MR, Wade MJ, McIntyre-Nolan S, Bassano I, Denise H, Bass D, Bentley J, Bunce JT, Grimsley J, Hart A, Hoffmann T, Jeffries A, Paterson S, Pollock S, Porter J, Smith D, van Aerle R, Watts G, Engeli A, Henderson G. . London: Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencie, 2021.