Environmental Recovery, Surveillance and Treatment Lab
(EnReST)
Material Development
The lab engineers advanced functional materials from waste streams, particularly biochar derived from algae, sewage sludge, plastic waste, and agricultural residues. These include activated biochars, nanocomposites, and graphitic carbon nitride-based materials. The focus is on designing low-cost, high-performance materials for environmental applications turning waste into valuable resources.
Resource Recovery
Focused on recovering value from waste including biogas enhancement, volatile fatty acids (VFAs), liquid fertilizers, and metal biomining. The algal biorefinery concept integrates algal cultivation with multiple product streams, supporting a circular bioeconomy model. This theme aligns with sustainable waste-to-resource transformation.
Material-Microbe Interactions
The lab investigates how engineered materials like biochar interact with microbial communities and plant systems including the tripartite crosstalk among biochar, plants, and soil microbes. Applications span soil amendment for improving fertility and remediation of contaminated soils.
Bioinformatics Approaches for Microbial Dynamics
Understanding how microbial communities respond to environmental interventions is key to sustainable ecosystem management. Bioinformatics-driven analyses enable insights into shifts in community composition, functional potential, and microbial interactions under varying conditions. This approach also extends to studying microplastic–microbe interactions, where microplastics act as novel niches for microbial colonization, facilitating the spread of mobile genetic elements and horizontal gene transfer. By leveraging computational tools to decode such complex datasets, this research aims to uncover mechanisms influencing soil health, nutrient cycling, and environmental resilience.