Faculty Directory
Ludmilla Aristilde

Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering (by courtesy)

Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences (by courtesy)

Contact

2145 Sheridan Road
Tech A316
Evanston, IL 60208-3109

847-491-2999Email Ludmilla Aristilde

Website

Aristilde Research Group

Departments

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Chemical and Biological Engineering

Download CV

Education

Postdoctoral Fellow, Princeton University

Ph.D., University of California-Berkeley

M.S., University of California-Berkeley

B.S., Cornell University

B.F.A., Cornell University


Research Interests

Dr Aristilde’s areas of expertise are in the combined application of experimental and computational tools in chemistry and biochemistry to gain novel molecular insights into the role of natural mineral and biological catalysts in environmental organic processes. The goal of the Aristilde Group is to obtain a fundamental understanding of the “why” and “how” of the environmental behavior of organics, with implications for nutrient cycling, ecosystem health, agricultural productivity, and environmental biotechnology. The current research activities of her group are focused on (i) cellular carbon metabolism of organic substrates in environmental bacteria, (ii) catalytic dynamics of nutrient-cycling extracellular enzymes, and (iii) the physical chemistry of biomolecules and organic contaminants in environmental matrices


Selected Publications

  1. Zhou N., Mendonca C.M., Carroll A.L., Pate S., Nieto-Domínguez M., Chen X., Zhang L., Teitel K.P., Dekker N.K., Elmore J.E., Nikel P.I., Waldbauer J.R., Guss A.M., Mangan N.M., Aristilde L. (2025) Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase homologs as bifunctional gatekeepers of metabolic segregation in Pseudomonas Putida. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 22, e2513479122.
  2. Kelch S. E., Barrios-Cerda B., Park Y., Aristilde L. (2025) Mechanisms of water retention at carbohydrate-clay interfaces. PNAS Nexus, 4.
  3. Zhou N., Wilkes R.A., Chen X., Teitel K.P., Belgrave J.A., Beckham G.T., Werner A.Z., Yu Y., Aristilde L. (2025) Quantitative decoding of coupled carbon and energy metabolism in Pseudomonas putida for lignin carbon utilization. Communications Biology, 8.
  4. Basinski J.J., Bone S. E., Niyitanga Manzi A., Naderi Beni N., Tobias F.R., Sanchez M., Cheng C.X., Thongsomboon W., Aristilde L. (2025) Quantitative benchmarking of catalytic parameters for enzyme-mimetic ribonucleotide dephosphorylation by iron oxide minerals, Environmental Science and Technology, 59, 5568–5584.
  5. Wilkes R.A., Zhou N., Carroll A.L., Aryal O., Teitel K.P., Wilson R.S., Kapoor A., Zhang L., Castaneda E., Guss A.M., Waldbauer J.R., Aristilde L. (2024) Mechanisms of polyethylene terephthalate pellet fragmentation into nanoplastics and assimilable carbons by wastewater Comamonas. Environmental Science and Technology, 58 (43), 19338–19352.
  6. Basinski J., Bone S., Klein A.R., Thongsomboon W., Mitchell V., Shukle J., Druschel G.K., Thompson A., Aristilde L. (2024) Unraveling iron oxides as abiotic catalysts of organic phosphorus recycling in soil and sediment matrices. Nature Communications, 15, 5930.
  7. Mendonca C.M., Zhang L., Waldbauer J., Aristilde L. (2024) Disproportionate carbon dioxide efflux in bacterial metabolic pathways for different organic substrates leads to variable contribution to carbon-use efficiency, Environmental Science and Technology, 58 (25), 11041-11052.
  8. Wang J., Wilson R.S., Aristilde L (2024) Electrostatic coupling and water bridging in hierarchy of biomolecule adsorption at water-clay interfaces. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121 (7), e231656912. 
  9. Wilkes, R.A.., Waldbauer J., Parker D.J., Zhang L., Guss A.M., Aristilde L (2023) Complex regulation in a Comamonas platform for diverse aromatic carbon metabolism, Nature Chemical Biology, 19, 651-662.
  10. Hassanpour B., Blair N., Aristilde L. (2022) Metabolomics of unresolved molecular variability in stream dissolved organic carbon, Water Research, 223, 118923.