Professor Jochen Mueller, Dr Richard Bade and PhD student Dhaya Nadarajan attended the recent Testing the Waters 7 conference in Portugal.
Dr Bade gave a keynote presentation on A decade of wastewater-based epidemiology to monitor the dynamic market of New Psychoactive Substances, while Prof Mueller presented on behalf of Dr Rory Verhagen discussing Wastewater-based evaluation of the efficacy of oxycodone regulations in Australia while student Dhaya Nadarajan showcased a conference poster on Developing sensitive methods for the detection of designer drugs in influent wastewater.
For PhD student Dhaya Nadarajan, this was her first international conference, and she observed: “Attending my first international conference outside Australia has been an invaluable experience. I had the opportunity to present our work on alternative sampling strategies for detecting new psychoactive substances in wastewater to field experts. One of the highlights was meeting several authors and collaborators whose work I’ve long admired. This conference has been a remarkable step forward in my journey as an early-career researcher.”
Dr Bade also found the conference rewarding, commenting: “The conference was another great opportunity to reconnect in person with colleagues and discuss potential future research prospects. With attendees from (inter)national government institutes as well as industry and academia, it is clear how wastewater-based epidemiology is well regarded beyond pure research and can help inform policy.”
