Kata Farkas
Kata is a Principal Consultant in Microbiology at Water Research Centre (WRc), and an Honorary Research Fellow at Bangor University. She is an internationally known scientist with over 10 years of academic experience in waterborne pathogen detection, source tracking water-related public health risk assessment and wastewater-based epidemiology. She has extensive experience delivering high-profile projects for the UK and Welsh Governments, government agencies (Defra, Home Office, EA, NRW), and water companies. She co-led award-winning national wastewater-based epidemiology programmes for tracking SARS-CoV-2 and other pathogens in wastewater in England and Wales. She has developed and validated methods for the concentration and quantitative detection of waterborne and respiratory viruses in wastewater and surface water. Kata has published over 80 peer-reviewed science papers (original research and reviews) in wastewater-based epidemiology, faecal indicator assessment, environmental AMR and waterborne pathogen detection, tracking, modelling and risk assessment.
Long ReadsWhat are we swimming in? The growing need for Microbial Source Tracking
The pandemic changed the way many of us connect with the outdoors. Wild swimming and other aquatic pursuits have seen an increase in public interest since 2020, and with that, a heightened awareness of water quality.