​The Environmental Biotechnology Group at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa focuses on developing novel solutions to environmental problems related to wastewater treatment and resource recovery.

News

  • June 2026 - Dr. Shukla completed his Patents2Products program with Office of Innovation & Commercialization, advancing the technological maturity of Iron Cycling Biofilters for onsite wastewater treatment.  
  • April 2026 - Congrats to Abigail Lin on defending her MS thesis! Her work in understanding algae and bacteria growth in wastewater systems was published on Environmental Microbiology. 
  • Mar 2026 - Check out our new publication on ES&T Engineering. We explored the potentail of utilizng iron in volcanic rocks for enhanced onsite nutrient removal. 
  • Feb 2026 - Junxi and Sayanti presented their posters at the Pacific Water Conference organized by HWEA. Congrats to Pourya for receiving the 2026 HWEA PONO Memorial Scholarship! 🎉
  • Jan 2026 - Excited to share our new Perspective on Environ. Sci. Water: Res. Technol. exploring how emerging microbial pathways with nitrite, iron, manganese, and sulfate can reshape onsite wastewater treatment into more resilient and climate-smart systems. 💧
  • Dec 2025 - Proud to congratulate Heather Madsen on her graduation! She completed her project on water quality monitoring of a novel onsite wastewater treatment technology from WAIHOME.
  • August 2025 - Alexander Anderson completed an 8-week internship through the Native Hawaiian Science & Engineering Mentorship Program in our lab. He presented his project, “Capturing Laughing Gas (N₂O) from Wastewater Treatment: A Strategy for Decarbonization,” under the mentorship of Sayanti and Junxi.
  • June 2025 - Sayanti and Abigail attended ASM Microbes 2025 in Los Angeles. They presented a poster titled “Bacteria-Microalgae Interactions in Hawaiian Wastewater Treatment Facilities”, on their ongoing work surveying bacterial and microalgal communities in Oahu’s wastewater treatment systems.
  • Feb 2025 - Our group presented at the Pacific Water Conference 2025. ​Congratulations to Pourya and Bikal winning Best Poster Awards from HWEA and AWWA! Congratulations to Bikal on receiving the PONO (Peter Ono) Memorial Scholarship!
  • Sep 2024 - Welcome our new PhD student, Pourya!
  • Aug 2024 - Welcome our newest group members: Abigail, Bikal, and Heather!
  • Aug 2024 - Congrats Jason and Camerron for completing summer internship in our lab through the Native Hawaiian Science & Engineering Mentorship Program (NHSEMP)!
  • April 2024 - Welcome! Dr. Ghosh has joined our team.
  • Feb 2024 - New project funded by the NSF Convergence Accelerator program for cesspool replacement solutions [UH News] 



​Track K: Equitable Water Solutions
  • Feb 2024 - Welcome our new group member! Junxi just joined as a PhD student.
  • Dec 2023 - Dr. Shukla presented his recent work on Modeling of Algal-bacterial Interactions at AGU 23 @ San Francisco  
  • Nov 2023 - Dr. Wang gave a talk on N2O recovery at the 12th National Conference on Environmental Chemistry @ Wuhan, China
  • Sep 2023 - Check out our new publication on cross-section and analysis method for microbial encapsulation!  
  • Aug 2023 - Welcome! Dr. Shukla has joined our team.
  • June 2023 - Our group website is now online!