ABSTRACT: Pathogenic viruses are responsible for the majority of infectious disease risk from sewage-contaminated water, yet our current monitoring systems were not designed to detect them. Regulatory frameworks rely on bacterial indicators that poorly predict viral risk, and direct viral detection at health-relevant concentrations remains technically challenging given the extraordinary diversity of human viral pathogens. This talk presents our group's work developing quantitative viral metagenomic approaches and identifying robust novel viral indicators for environmental waters, and discusses how this work connects to wastewater-based epidemiology, showing how the same molecular tools that improve water quality monitoring can enable real-time tracking of community disease dynamics as demonstrated during COVID-19 and beyond. I will close with a perspective on how quantitative viral surveillance will reshape both water safety regulations and proactive public health intervention.

BIO: Kyle Bibby, PhD, PE, BCEE is the Keating-Crawford Collegiate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, where he also serves as Director of the ECI Water Initiative. His research group focuses on molecular tools for environmental pathogen detection, novel fecal indicator development, and wastewater-based epidemiology. His work has been recognized with an NSF CAREER Award, the 2025 AAEES University Research Grand Prize, and Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher designation in 2023 and 2025. He currently serves on the WHO roster of experts updating the global drinking water quality guidelines.