CWBE has launched!

We were delighted to welcome around 100 people to our launch on Tuesday 1st April, at the University of Bath. Following on directly from the Red ALERT CDT conference, which took place the previous day, Professor Sarah Hainsworth OBE FREng, Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research and Enterprise), officially launched CWBE and praised the centre’s vision to transform public and environmental health management.

Prof Davey Jones (Bangor University) and Prof Kevin Thomas (University of Queensland), leading experts in WBE, started the proceedings with some fascinating talks on the applications of WBE in monitoring antimicrobial resistance genes in Wales and the setting up of the national wastewater drug monitoring program in Australia, respectively. Some of CWBE’s Directors (Barbara Kasprzyk-Hordern, Pedro Estrela, Julie Barnett and Julian Faraway) then set out in detail, the plans for the Centre, with the ultimate 5-year plan to launch and test a One Health SW sentinel testing site for national research and innovation.

Afterwards, Isabel Oliver, Chief Scientific Officer at UK HSA, provided an insight into the government’s strategy for securing health and prosperity and then Ruth Barden from Wessex Water provided a water company perspective on One Health. In the final segment before lunch, nine of our early career researchers gave lightning talks about their research. For a full list of speakers and their talk titles, please see this full agenda.

After lunch, we heard from Enrique Cadenas and Callum Campbell from the Ministry of Justice Science Office who laid out the potential of wastewater-based epidemiology to help inform prison health strategies.

Finally, there were prizes given out to the best poster and best presentation from our early career researchers. Congratulations to Harry Elliss (PhD candidate, 3rd year) for winning the best poster prize (‘Understanding Community Health and Well-Being: the WBE Approach‘) and James Boxall-Clasby (PhD submitted) for the best presentation (‘Predictive Modelling of COVID-19 Case Data through Wastewater Based Epidemiology’).

Written by

helena

March 17, 2025