The Water Biofilms seminar series: “What are biofilms doing in our drinking water pipes?” by Professor Joby Boxall, University of Sheffield

Dr Francis Hassard is a Lecturer in Public Health Microbiology at Cranfield Water Science Institute, where he provides technical leadership in potable water microbiology.

Francis has a distinct research agenda into biofiltration for drinking water treatment. He focuses on next-generation municipal water services (drinking water, wastewater, stormwater) framed around biofilms and resource recovery (i.e. water and nutrients) for improved ecohealth and living conditions; integrated with quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) to identify research gaps and management targets.

Title: What are biofilms doing in our drinking water pipes?

Professor Joby Boxall is Chair of Water Infrastructure Engineering, The University of Sheffield.

Prof. Boxall trained as a civil engineer, completing his undergraduate degree and his PhD in mixing and transport of pollutants in natural river channels. Joby’s research is concerned with urban water (with a focus on water supply, distribution pipe networks in particular), and helps to protect public health and well-being through ensuring the quality of that supply.
He takes a multidisciplinary approach to ensuring the provision of sustainable water services in the face of global grand challenges such as population growth and increasing density, climate change and ageing infrastructure. Joby works to monitor water quality, such as discolouration or bacteriological issues. He looks at the conditions inside our water pipes, including the biofilms in our water systems to ensure they don’t harbour harmful bacteria. He also investigates contaminant ingress, where dangerous contaminants can enter pipes through leaks and be transported through the pipe network.
Joby’s work aims to understand our hydraulics systems’ behaviour by modelling networks and using physical flow measurements, to better predict where failures might occur and address quantity issues. His work on leakage ranges from fundamental understanding of fluid structure ground iterations to novel artificial intelligence based software for leak detection that has been commercialised.