Katherine (Trina) McMahon
Position title: Professor of Bacteriology; Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Email: trina.mcmahon@wisc.edu
Phone: Water quality, freshwater sciences, wastewater treatment, microbiology, nutrient removal, water quality modeling, limnology. Work: 608-890-2836
Address:
Education
B.S. 1995 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
M.S. 1997 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Ph.D. 2002 University of California at Berkeley
PubMed Publications
Department Website
Research Focus
Microbes have extraordinarily diverse and sophisticated physiologies, communication strategies, and mechanisms of evolution. Scientists and engineers are only beginning to understand and exploit the metabolic potential of these organisms and their communities. The broad objective of my research program is to improve our capacity to predict and model microbial behavior, while searching for novel biologically mediated transformations that can be harnessed for engineering applications.
My students and I study the microbial ecology of both natural and engineered systems. We use molecular tools to investigate microbial community structure and function in lakes and activated sludge. Our work on freshwater lakes leverages the North Temperate Lakes Long Term Ecological Research program, providing rich contextual data for our 20+ year time series of microbial data. The activated sludge systems are designed to achieve phosphorus and/or nitrogen removal from wastewater, which ultimately protects surface waters from eutrophication. We combine (biogeo)chemical measurements, ‘omics and post-‘omics data, and computational modeling to describe and understand these systems. The overarching goal is the construction of more predictive mechanistic and ecosystem-scale models to use for forecasting and in silico experimentation.
Trainees
No current MET students
Past MET students
- Charles Olmsted