Ramesh Goel This award supports the U.S.-India Workshop: The Interface of Water Quality Issues and Infectious Diseases, Bengaluru, India, January 4-8, 2010. Professor Ramesh Goel, University of Utah and Dr. Sekhar Muddu, Indian Institute of Science will convene a 5-day workshop focused on developing research and education collaborations to study the environmental and health impacts of excess nutrients in surface waters and cost effective removal processes. Since India has three of the ten most rapidly urbanizing cities in the world, this workshop offers an exceptional opportunity for U.S. and Indian scientists to develop new collaborations in this subject area.
Intellectual Merit The PI contends that current understanding of excess nutrients in surface waters and cost effective removal processes consists largely of studies that are based in the Western context, and that there is only preliminary understanding about the removal of excess nutrients from surface waters in countries such as India. Eutrophication is a well known environmental problem but its effects on human health are not well-studied. The goal of this workshop is to examine theoretical, methodological, and educational applications by comparing U.S. and Indian approaches to the study of excess nutrients from surface waters in relation to urban ecosystems and water borne infectious diseases.
Broader Impacts Eutrophication, which is a global environmental problem, will be of high interest to most of the workshop participants and is expected to attract broad attention. The workshop organizers anticipate the following outcomes: 1) two to three research proposals studying surface water and treatment systems in rapidly growing urban cities, 2) research manuscripts for submission to global change science peer-reviewed journals, 3) the development of pilot/demonstration curricular modules designed to internationalize urban water quality and ecology related courses in higher education, 4) collaborative research activities that will lead to the establishment of a bilateral community of committed researchers and educators in the field of surface water and water quality research.
