International research project wins top award
A major international collaboration, involving biological scientists from Southampton, to develop an early warning system to detect and tackle deliberate contamination in drinking water has been awarded a major French prize.
Professor Bill Keevil and Dr Sandra Wilks from the Centre for Biological Sciences with Professor Ian Croudace and Dr Phil Warwick from Ocean and Earth Science were the only UK researchers among academics and industry professionals from 12 countries who worked on the €7.8million SecurEau European Union four year research project. Led by the University of Lorraine in France, it is one of the first 12 winners of the ‘Stars of Europe' prize awarded by the French government.
"We are pleased the achievements of SecurEau have been recognised with this award," says Bill. "The partnership developed effective tools to respond to contamination in complex systems and highlighted areas of improvement. It is also standardising best practice across Europe."
The Southampton team came up with new methods and technologies including innovative sensors to detect low levels of microbial and radiological contaminants and improve the efficiency of decontamination systems, especially in biofilms. Other project partners developed mathematical models to determine sources and areas of contamination as well as enhanced cleaning methods.
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Professor Bill Keevil BSc PhD CBiol FRSB FRSPH FAAM
Professor Bill Keevil is Professor of Environmental Healthcare within School of Biological Sciences at the University of Southampton.
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Dr Sandra A Wilks BSc (Hons), PhD, FRSB
Dr Sandra Wilks joined the microbiology group in 2000 as a postdoctoral research fellow. Since then she has worked on a number of research projects involving the detection of bacteria in complex environments and, in particular, biofilms.
Since being awarded an IfLS Knowledge Mobilisation Senior Research Fellowship in Healthcare Technologies in 2013, she has been working at the interface of Biological Sciences and Health Sciences.
In 2018, she was made an interdisciplinary lecturer and is leading a programme of work related to catheter-associated biofilms and contamination of nasogastric feeding tubes.
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