Olga Tsyusko
University of Kentucky, KY·Earth & Environmental Science
Chemicals that end up in drinking water raise two linked questions: how harmful are they to living things, and can treatment technologies remove them without creating new hazards? Both grants combine water chemistry or materials engineering with toxicity testing.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Pharmacology
Engineering
- Topics
drinking water
disinfection by-products
halocyclopentadienes
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Sep 2027
What they work on
- Measure halocyclopentadiene (HCPD) disinfection by-products in drinking water collected across the United States using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, to map how widespread they are.
- Identify the water conditions and treatment factors that drive HCPD formation through controlled laboratory chlorination and chloramination experiments.
- Test whether HCPDs damage DNA using the comet assay in Chinese hamster ovary cells, plus long-amplification quantitative PCR and multigenerational assays in the nematode C. elegans.
- Determine how 2D phosphorene and hexagonal boron nitride nanosheets transform, stay stable and break down PFAS, both free in water and embedded in nanofiltration membranes, using nanoscale characterization and molecular modeling.
- Evaluate the toxicity of the 2D nanomaterials and of PFAS breakdown products in C. elegans, to confirm that membrane treatment yields less-toxic by-products.
More about the research
A central tool in both is the nematode C. elegans, a tiny worm used in labs as a living test animal. One project looks at a newly found group of by-products formed when water is disinfected. The other tests whether new filter materials, and the chemicals they leave behind after breaking down pollutants, are safe.
Why it matters
Most Americans drink disinfected water. This work could show whether a newly discovered class of disinfection by-products threatens health, and what conditions cause these chemicals to form. That knowledge could guide water utilities toward safer treatment. Separately, the filter project could lead to membrane systems that remove and destroy PFAS at treatment plants or in point-of-use filters, after confirming that the breakdown products are less toxic.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Collaborative Research: Drinking Water Safety: Occurrence, Formation, and Genotoxicity of New Halocyclopentadiene Disinfection By-Products
NSF · Oct 2024 – Sep 2027
Collaborative Research: Transformation, interaction and toxicity of emerging 2D nanomaterials free-standing and embedded onto nanocomposite membranes for PFAS degradation
NSF · Jan 2023 – Dec 2026
Closest labs
Hao Chen
New Jersey Institute of Technology, NJ·Chemistry
Develop a "bottom-up" mass spectrometry imaging method that identifies tissue proteins from their peptide fragments rather than as intact proteins, aiming to identify far more proteins per imaging experiment.
Leanne Powers
SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, NY·Chemistry
Measure apparent quantum yields, meaning how efficiently absorbed sunlight produces reactive species, for triplet DOM, singlet oxygen, superoxide, hydrogen peroxide and hydroxyl radical from field DOM and model compounds such as lignin, tannins and flavonoids.
Mark Kushner
University of Michigan, MI·Engineering
Develop computational models of the interface between an atmospheric-pressure plasma and water, emphasizing how electrons and ions accelerate into the water surface where PFAS 'forever chemicals' collect.
The school
University of Kentucky: 34 labs on PI Pages, $528M a year on research, 319 research doctorates a year.
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