Event Details

Contamination of drinking water and recreational waters remains the most significant issue throughout the world. The global threats are immense and seem to be growing including ancient diseases such as cholera and new emerging pathogens. Quantitative microbial risk assessment or QMRA is a frame work that brings science, engineering, management and policy together. New advances in genomics research, technologies, mathematics and earth sciences all point the way forward to utilise QMRA for better decision making. To address the major challenges in protecting and managing water resources we will need to invest in characterisation of our water microbiological communities, understand risk and address resilience under global change. Our global community will continue to work toward achieving sustainable safe water working in key areas to integrate into QMRA: i. New water genomics technology to explore the water microbiome. ii. Mapping and monitoring to connect climate and earth systems to microbial distributions and iii. Innovative engineering solutions for microbial water safety.

About the Speaker: 
Professor Joan Bray Rose is the Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize 2026 Laureate. Prof. Rose holds the Homer Nowlin Chair in Water Research at Michigan State University (MSU) where she has worked for the last 22 years. She is the Director of the MSU Water Alliance leading interdisciplinary efforts to solve significant water problems in the 21st Century (https://water.msu.edu/). Prof. Rose is an international expert in water microbiology, water quality and public health safety (with over 300 publications). She is one of the early creators of quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) and architects of the framework beginning in 1988. She continues to study emerging global microbial health risks. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (2011), Royal Institution of Singapore, (2019), the EU Academy of Sciences, (2019) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2025). Prof. Rose is the winner of the 2016 Stockholm Water Prize and the 2024 International Water Association’s Global Water Award and the 2026 recipient of the Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize.

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