Dr. Bridget Hegarty was recently awarded an NSF CAREER award for her project entitled: "CAREER: Designing safe and effective phage cocktails for precise microbial control in water systems". Growth of unwanted bacteria in US water systems is estimated to cost over $7 billion each year. Her project will address the economic and public health costs of this bacterial growth.
Through this award, her lab will develop a platform for the rational design of phage cocktails, addressing a key bottleneck in the development of phage biocontrol. Phage biocontrol uses mixtures of phages (aka phage cocktails) to remove specific pathogens or other problematic bacteria.
Currently, the design of phage cocktails is slow and laborious, relying on trial and error to identify the most effective combinations of phages. Dr. Hegarty's project will accelerate the development of improved phage biocontrol technologies, reducing the costs of unwanted microbial growth and better protecting human health.