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Speaker Information

Dr. Ameet Pinto
Georgia Institute of Technology 

Abstract: From Pathogen-centric to Microbiome-Inclusive Drinking Water Quality Management
Most microbes in drinking water do not pose a human health risk, but the presence of pathogenic microbes can have severe public health implications. Hence, nearly all drinking water treatment technologies designed to manage microbial communities are intended to either inactivate, starve, or remove microorganisms during treatment and minimize growth during water distribution. Yet, every liter of drinking water can contain tens of millions of diverse microorganisms. How does the drinking water microbiome persist within the drinking water distribution systems despite chronic disinfectant stress and nutrient deprivation? This talk will present hypotheses based on field data on potential ecological and physiological mechanisms underpinning the persistence (and sometimes proliferation) of the drinking water microbiome. Systematically testing these hypotheses under field-relevant conditions has the potential to shift our approaches to microbial management of drinking water systems from a pathogen-centric to a microbiome-inclusive framework.

Bio: Dr Ameet Pinto is an Environmental Engineer and Carlton S Wilder Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Ameet is a Chemical Engineer from the Institute of Chemical Technology (University of Mumbai) with post-graduate degrees in Environmental Engineering from the University of Alaska (2005) and Virginia Tech, USA (2009). Before joining Georgia Tech in 2021, Ameet was an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University and a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow.  Their research has received support through prestigious grants and awards like EPSRC’s Bright IDEAS Award in 2015, the NSF CAREER and ISME/IWA Rising Star Awards in 2018, the 2019 Paul L Busch Award for Innovation in Applied Water Quality Research and the IWA MEWE Mid-Career Award in 2023. They were inducted as a Fellow of the International Water Association in 2024. Their research focuses on the development and application of state-of-the-art molecular and modelling tools to monitor and manage the microbiology of drinking water systems to improve the sustainability of treatment processes and enhance the safety and security of drinking water.