Summary
Wastewater treatment protects public health, ecosystems, and economic prosperity by removing pollutants before water is released back into the environment. At the core of this process are complex microbial communities whose stability strongly affects energy use, treatment reliability, and infrastructure costs. However, engineers currently lack precise tools to control these microbial systems, relying instead on energy intensive operational adjustments such as aeration. This project addresses this challenge by developing new ways to harness bacteriophages or “phages”, which naturally infect and
