Suping Yu
Visiting period: 2017/09-2018/09
Ph.D. candidate, Tsinghua University, China
B.S. Ocean University of China, China, 2013
I’m a visiting student in Dr. Qilin Li’s lab, working on membrane biofouling control with environment-friendly methods.
Biofilm is a life form caused by adhering and aggregating of bacteria on solid surface or liquid-air interface, and is found responsible for membrane biofouling. In the previous study, D-tyrosine was reported to prevent biofilm formation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1, a common type of bacteria which is easy to form biofilm, at an effective concentration of 5 nM. However, it was unclear that whether this biochemical signal compounds interfere equally effectively towards antibiotic resistant bacteria.
My goal is, firstly, to study the properties of biofilm formed by antibiotic resistant PAO1; secondly, to study the effect of D-tyrosine on biofilm inhibition at different concentrations; thirdly, to investigate whether the mechanisms of biofilm inhibition are different between PAO1 and antibiotic resistant PAO1.
Pin Zhao
Visiting period: 2017/09-2018/09
Ph.D. candidate, Shandong University, China
B.S. Shandong University, China, 2012
I am a visiting PhD student in Dr. Qilin Li’s lab, and come from Shandong University, China. I will be here for 18 months sponsored by China Scholarship Council. My research is about the membrane technology in wastewater treatment. As we know, all membrane based applications are faced an inevitably problem — membrane fouling, which would decrease operation efficiency of equipment by reducing flux, increasing membrane resistance and energy consumption. However, the fouling mechanism of ion-exchange membrane has been few studied until now. I mainly focus on two works at Rice University. Both of them are about ion-exchange membrane fouling: 1. Fouling and cleaning mechanisms of ion-exchange membrane fouled by winery wastewater: Especially the effect on the nitrate transport; 2. Membrane fouling of MCDI in treating cooling water.
Jinyi Wu
Visiting period: 2017/09-2017/12
Ph.D. student,
B.S., Peking University, China, 2018
My name is Jingyi Wu, and I’m a visiting undergraduate research student in Dr. Qilin Li’s lab in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Since bacteria adhesion is the first step of biofilm formation, investigating the mechanism and the influencing factors of bacteria adhesion is important for biofouling control. My research here focuses on how the engineered micro/nano-patterns on surface materials will influence the adhesion of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Also, I’m trying to use modeling software COMSOL Multiphysics to simulate the fluid flow and bacteria behavior in this process. By doing this project, I hope that we may provide some ideas for biofouling control using engineered materials.