Award-winning drinking water researcher Sarah Haig joins Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Pitt

PITTSBURGH (September 4, 2018) … Sarah Haig, an environmental engineer with a focus on the drinking water microbiome, joins the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering this fall as assistant professor. Dr. Haig’s research combines environmental microbiology, environmental chemistry, and public health to improve water quality with a focus on drinking water systems.

“Providing safe and reliable drinking water is one of the world’s most critical concerns, not only in developing countries but in many cities throughout the U.S. and developed world,” noted Radisav Vidic, Professor and Department Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Swanson School. “Sarah’s expertise in this field is an important addition to our faculty and we are looking forward not only to her contributions in the discipline but also her passion for teaching young engineers about these issue.”

Dr. Haig completed her PhD, “Characterizing the Functional Microbial Ecology of Slow Sand Filters Through Environmental Genomics” in September 2014 at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. She was also a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow (October 2014 – July 2018) at the University of Michigan, in the groups of Lutgarde Raskin (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering) and John LiPuma (Department of Pediatrics), where she focused on linking the drinking water microbiome to human health.

Dr. Haig has published several papers in leading journals in the fields of environmental engineering and microbiology and has given numerous presentations at national and international conferences. She has received several honors and awards for her research including Society for General Microbiology and International Water Association Young Water Professional prizes, a Lord Kelvin Adam Smith PhD scholarship, a Microbiology of the Built Environment fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and a Dow Sustainability fellowship.

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