Interdisciplinary Initiatives Program Round 8 - 2016

Craig Criddle, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Chris Francis, Environmental Earth Systems Science
Stephen Luby, Medicine (Infectious Diseases)
Susan Holmes, Statistics
Justin Sonnenburg, Microbiology & Immunology

This project explores the potential for recovery of valuable community health information from the DNA and RNA in the organic matter of domestic wastewater. Such data could potentially enable early detection of infectious disease, improved estimates of disease prevalence, and insights into emergence of antibiotic resistance within communities. The study will be performed on the Stanford campus at the Codiga Resource Recovery Center, a research facility equipped for automated sampling of wastewater from the Serra Street sewer, a sewer that collects wastewater from ~7,000 residents of the Stanford community.