At the end of a morning of fieldwork tracking faecal pollution sources along the River Team we were able to show our visitors Dr. Osuolale Olayinka from Nigeria and Ms. Jemila Mohammed from Ethiopia the Angel of the North.

It was a joy to celebrate 70 years of water and environmental health research and teaching at Newcastle University with over 260 guests, students and colleagues! Many thanks to all the participants, and especially the contributors to my sessions on sanitation for all, and water leakage.

Jidapa Plaimart gave an excellent presentation of her biofiltration experiment at the Symposium on Next Generation Sequencing, Probiotics and Other Technologies for Water Quality Management in Aquaculture. The well-attended symposium was organized by Prof Soydoa Vinitnantharat and her team at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi.

The KMUTT team delivered a well attended training workshop on next generation sequencing with the MinION of Oxford Nanopore Technologies, which was attended by students and researchers from different universities across Southeast Asia.

Prof Soydoa Vinitnantharat and her team organized a well-attended meeting with aquaculture practitioners, who could learn at several workstations about the methods developed through our Newton Fund/British Council sponsored research collaboration.

I met many wonderful academics and NGO professionals at the research leadership workshop in Dubai organized by the British Council as part of its South Asia science programmes.

As part of the GCRF Global Water Security & Sustainability Hub activities, Kishor and I provided training in comprehensive water quality analysis, incl. next generation sequencing with the MinION, at the Addis Ababa Water and Sewerage Authority (AAWSA) laboratories. Participants came from AAWSA, Addis Ababa University, Arba Minch University, the Awash Basin Development Authority, IWMI, and the Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Energy.

Kishor’s first MinION paper was published in Scientific Reports

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-51997-x

THE BIG MOMENT: Franella Halla is loading the flow cell at Ardhi University. Within a week from water sampling to 8 million reads, and everything done in Tanzania. A big success for the IMAGINE team!

It’s fantastic to be among the Royal Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Development Seed Fund Awardees to work with Dr Osuolale Olayinka, Elizade University, Dr Muhammad Nauman Ahmad, University of Agriculture, Peshawar, Dr Sara Waring, University of Liverpool, and Dr Shaaban Mgana, Ardhi University, on rapid waterborne hazard surveying and communication methods.