Liping Pang

Biography

Dr Liping Pang is a Science Leader at ESR. Her field of expertise is on the experimental investigations and modelling of contaminant transport in subsurface media, in particular on subsurface microbial transport. In October 2016 Liping received a prestigious Marsden Grant to lead research into a new approach to study how the disease causing bacteria, Legionella, can survive in man-made water systems such as household plumbing. This is the third Marsden Grant Dr. Pang has won. In the same year, she was also awarded a Health Research Council grant to study protozoa and virus removal in water filtration systems typically used in New Zealand, as well as an MBIE Endeavour Fund for her "Smart Idea" proposal for concurrently tracking multiple sources and pathways of water contamination using synthetic DNA tracers. In recent years Liping has pioneered multidisciplinary research in developing cost-effective surrogates using biomolecule-modified particles for mimicking pathogen transport and removal in porous media. So far, surrogates for Cryptosporidium parvum, rotavirus and adenovirus have been developed and validated in alluvial and coastal sand aquifer media. The Cryptosporidium surrogates have been also satisfactorily validated by researchers overseas in granular limestone aquifer media.

Research Interest

“Our approach has opened up an exciting new direction for assessing pathogen attenuation and transport in porous media," she says. “Testing the actual pathogens is expensive, risky and time consuming. Other methods, like using turbidity for measuring protozoa removal, are grossly inaccurate. The new surrogate techniques can allow us to get a much clearer picture of how certain pathogens are transported and removed in water environment. We are currently working with Water Research Australia to validate the surrogates in water treatment processes like coagulation and filtration.”