Ryan Ziels
Associate Professor
rziels@civil.ubc.ca
Home department: Civil Engineering
Website: Environmental Microbial Biotechnology for Resource Recovery (EMBeRR) Lab
Research Interests
- Sustainable Biological Wastewater Treatment
- Resource Recovery
- Microbial Ecology
- Multi-Omics
- Anaerobic Digestion
- Biological Nutrient Removal
- Microbial Biotechnology
Research Projects
- Developing a platform for rapid online DNA monitoring of microbial communities in wastewater treatment systems: We utilize a suite of molecular microbiology techniques to probe microbial ecophysiology in water microbiomes. Our group utilizes stable isotope probing (SIP) techniques to label biomolecules and track the growth of microorganisms by integrating multi-omics (e.g. metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metaproteomics). We also are developing new protocols for the use of long-read sequencing in metagenome and amplicon sequencing. Ultimately, we utilize this molecular information to inform strategies to optimize engineered systems for enhanced resource recovery from waste streams.
- Advancing renewable methane production from municipal food waste using applied genomics: We are currently conducting research on improving the efficiency of anaerobic digestion for renewable biogas production from organic solid wastes as well as wastewater sludge. Projects in this area currently focus on:
- Elucidating adaptation of microbial communities to high ammonia levels
- Identifying novel syntrophic bacteria and methanogens
- Mapping metabolic networks of full-scale anaerobic digesters.
- Advancing biological phosphorus removal from wastewater using ecogenomics: We are exploring various energy-efficient biological processes for removing and recovering nutrients from wastewater. Projects in this area currently focus on:
- Short-cut nitrogen removal in activated sludge
- Novel polyphosphate accumulating organisms (PAOs) in enhanced biological phosphorus removing systems
- Aerobic granular sludge for simultaneous nitrogen and phosphorus removal