NEOF Visitors’ stories – Sophie Scutt

Sophie is a Civil Engineering PhD student working at the NEOF Visitor Facility. Her work involves investigating the presence of pathogens during urban flooding events in Sheffield. This work involves extracting environmental DNA (eDNA) from flood water and using metabarcoding and high throughput sequencing to identify the bacteria present. It is hoped that Sophie’s findings will provide data on the threats to human health in areas that do flood frequently, that will be useful in planning for and mitigating against such events.