Speaker: Dr. Davida Smyth, PhD., is an Associate Professor at Texas A&M University – San Antonio. She received her Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Dublin, Trinity College, Ireland, and completed her postdoctoral training at New York Medical College, the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and New York University. She has served as an Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Natural Sciences in Mercy College’s School of Health and Natural Sciences, an Assistant Research Scientist in Richard Novicks lab at NYU Langone Medical Center, an Adjunct Lecturer for the online Masters in Bioinformatics program at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and an Assistant Professor of Biology at New York City College of Technology (NYCCT). She is an external committee member for Mercy Colleges Adjunct Academy component of their Inclusive Excellence Project and Peer-Led Team Learning Program for Biology, Chemistry, and Psychology students. In 2019, she was invited to the steering committee of the Research Experiences in Microbiomes Network (REMNet) of CUNY and became a Co-PI in 2020. Her research focuses on epidemiology of microbes in wastewater, and she is deeply committed to improving STEM education with integrated social impacts, such as her course on “How the Toilet Changed the World” about the role and impact of sanitation on our society and about the ongoing and future challenges associated with both access to toilets and sustainable toilet design.
This talk will focus on how microbes in our built environment can tell us much about the biological and chemical processes occurring. From their transmission through the air and their accumulation in our wastewater, we can learn much about the health of our communities, at different levels of scale and over time. Using novel sampling techniques and next generation sequencing we’re studying the microbes in our classroom air, those present in the soils around our campus, and in our city’s wastewater to determine the prevalence of pathogens as well as antibiotic resistance.
Her lab website is here; they research microbiology, sustainability, pedagogy, and inclusion.