Dr. Yinyin Ye will launch her lab in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering at the University at Buffalo (SUNY-Buffalo) in January 2021. Dr. Ye's research focuses at the nexus of environmental engineering and human health. In water treatment and delivery systems, certain pathogens (e.g., bacteria and viruses) can survive through or even regrow, and ultimately threat public health. However, we lack effective monitoring and alarming strategies to protect the public against potential microbial risks in water. Dr. Ye's group is particularly interested in applying state-of-the-art proteomics tools and molecular techniques to bridge the knowledge gaps. Specifically, her group aims to 1) understand the inactivation mechanisms and predict the fate of human viruses in natural and engineered environment, 2) discover disease-relevant protein biomarkers in waste streams for community-wide health monitoring, and 3) investigate pathogenic mutations due to bacteriophages-bacteria interactions in engineered systems.  
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Dr. Ye is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Her work at PNNL is to develop and apply proteomics for understanding pathogen-human interactions and discovering disease biomarkers in human urine. Dr. Ye earned her B.S. degree in Water Supply and Wastewater Engineering from Tongji University, and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Environmental Engineering from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Her Ph.D. research focuses on the detection and fate of enveloped viruses (e.g., coronavirus) in water environment.