News

February 2025

We have a new paper online: "An integrated framework for early detection and transmissibility assessment of emerging variants in wastewater"!

November 2024

Katherine has a new paper online: "First Detection of Xylazine in Texas Wastewater and Its Association with Fentanyl Use". Congrats! 

October 2024

Fuqing was invited to present "Advancing Wastewater Surveillance with Dynamic Modelling and Sequencing" at the Infectious Disease Surveillance through Wastewater Analysis workshop at the Lorentz Center, Universiteit Leiden.

September 2024

New publication! Xingwen's paper, Revealing patterns of SARS-CoV-2 variant emergence and evolution using RBD amplicon sequencing of wastewater, is accepted by the Journal of Infection :)

Our book chapter, "The Scientific Basis of Mpox (Monkeypox)", is now formally published. Congratulations to the team on this accomplishment!

Kevin joined us! Welcome.

August 2024

Fantastic news! The National Science Foundation is funding our wastewater epidemiology work! This support will be invaluable in advancing our research.

July 2024

We have a new paper online: "RBD amplicon sequencing of wastewater reveals patterns of variant emergence and evolution". Great work to Xingwen! 

May 2024

Congrats to Scout Vanderwal and Jeremiah Oghuan for completing their MPH degree!

April 2024

Congrats to Dr. Anna Gitter for her paper on Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 

Fuqing visited the Brownsville Campus for science communication. 

March 2024

Xingwen gave a presentation on his project at the TEPHI Wastewater Working group meeting. (TEPHI: Texas Epidemic Public Health Institute)

Katherine Joseph (Doctoral student) joined our lab. Welcome Katherine!

February 2024

Xingwen (Postdoc) gave a presentation on his wastewater variant tracking project at the CID seminar series. (CID: Center for Infectious Diseases)

Fuqing was invited to join the NIH GVE study section for grant review.

Fuqing joined the TACCHO Wastewater Workshop and gave presentations on wastewater-based epidemiology. (TACCHO: Texas Association of City & County Health Officials) 

Dhvani Parikh (MPH) joined the group as a graduate assistant. Welcome Dhvani!

January 2024

New doctoral student, Jinze Li, joined our group! Welcome!

A research paper that Fuqing contributed to has been published in The ISME Journal. The paper is titled 'Low-level resource partitioning supports coexistence among functionally redundant bacteria during successional dynamics'.

December 2023

Exciting news! Our chapter on monkeypox has been accepted in the upcoming book "The Scientific Basis Of Monkeypox". 

November 2023

We have a new paper "Wastewater analysis of mpox virus in a city with low prevalence of Mpox disease: an environmental surveillance study" accepted by The Lancet Regional Health - Americas!

Fuqing was invited to give a talk at the annual meeting hold by American Public Health Association.

October 2023

not much to update, buried into proposal writing.

September 2023

The lab received the PRIME award from the School of Public Health at UTHealth. 

The lab received support through the G99 sponsorship program funded by Complete Genomics Inc for our wastewater sequencing project.

Fuqing is a co-investigator on a recent funded NIH R01 grant: "Wastewater sampling: A new tool to accelerate ending the HIV epidemic" 

August 2023

The lab received funding approval from the Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (SCOEH) for a pilot project on opioids. 

New doctoral student, Jiaoyang Xu, joined our group! Welcome!

July 2023

We have a new paper "Making waves: Integrating wastewater surveillance with dynamic modeling to track and predict viral outbreaks" accepted by Water Research! Yay!

Fuqing cohosted a minisymposium at SMB annual meeting 2023, and gave an oral presentation about wastewater surveillance work.

June 2023

Dr. Xingwen Chen joined the group as a postdoc. Welcome Xingwen! 

Fuqing attended and present at the ASM Microbe 2023 conference.

We have a new paper online: "Prolonged viral shedding from noninfectious individuals confounds wastewater-based epidemiology". Great work with Tin and the team! 

May 2023 

Congratulations to Anuja Rajendra Godbole on graduating with her MPH degree! Her contributions to our lab have been greatly appreciated.

Our new paper about Mpox in wastewater is online: "Wastewater surveillance suggests unreported Mpox cases in a low-prevalence area"! Congrats to Jeremiah.

Congratulations to Mats Leifels, the NTU team, and the Wu lab for their contribution to a new book published by Springer: "Handbook for Environmental Chemistry - Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in Wastewater at the Population Level".

April 2023 

Fuqing was invited to give a talk at Public Health Agency of Canada with the title: 'Enhance Wastewater Surveillance with Dynamic Modeling'.

March 2023 

Journal of Mathematical Biology published a paper titled "The emergence of a virus variant: dynamics of a competition model with cross-immunity time-delay validated by wastewater surveillance data for COVID-19" that led by Bruce Pell with contribution from the Wu lab.

Fuqing is co-hosting a Minisymposium "Integrating Data with Epidemic Models: Challenges and Opportunities" at the Society for Mathematical Biology Annual Meeting - 2023.

Frontiers in Public Health published a paper titled "Wastewater pandemic preparedness: Toward an end-to-end pathogen monitoring program" that led by Anthony William Maresso and the TEPHI Wastewater team including the Wu lab.

February 2023

Fuqing has a new paper titled "Updated analysis to reject the laboratory-engineering hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2", which is accepted by Environmental Research.  

January 2023

Our review paper "Not a waste: Wastewater surveillance to enhance public health" is accepted for publication in Frontiers (environmental chemical engineering section). Congrats to Anna, Jeremiah, and Anuja!

December 2022

Our paper about the mismatches in Monkeypox (Mpox) viral detection assay is accepted by Journal of Medical Virology! " Wide mismatches in the sequence of primers and probes for Monkeypox virus diagnostic assays".

A wastewater surveillance paper the Wu lab contributed is accepted for publication: "Assessment of a SARS-CoV-2 wastewater monitoring program in El Paso, Texas, from November 2020 to June 2022". Congrats to Anna!

November 2022

The lab research is expanding! We start to work with Carlos Chavarria and Carlos Monserrat on the El Paso campus for wastewater related projects. Welcome Carlos! 

October 2022

Fuqing was invited to give a presentation in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at UTHealth. 

Good news! our paper about SEIR-V modeling of wastewater surveillance data has been accepted by Science of the Total Environment. Great work Team!

September 2022

Our new paper about combining mathematical modeling and wastewater surveillance to understand the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 Variants is just online! 

Fuqing was invited as a Guest Editor to launch the Special Issue "Genetics of Infectious Diseases" in journal Genes. 

August 2022

Our new paper about the Monkeypox viral detection is just online: "Wide mismatches in the sequences of primers and probes for Monkeypox virus diagnostic assays".

Our collaboration with Dr. Erdman at MIT brings a new paper out: "Maternal Microbiota Modulate a Fragile X-like Syndrome in Offspring Mice". Congrats!

July 2022

Check out! Our new paper about modeling wastewater surveillance data to infer the true prevalence of COVID-19 cases and predict SARS-CoV-2 transmission is just online! Congrats to Tin and Samantha!

A review paper that the Wu lab contributed is published in Water Research: "Monitoring human arboviral diseases through wastewater surveillance: Challenges, progress and future opportunities". Congrats to the SMART team!

Fuqing was invited to give a talk at The BioST 2022 (World Biological Science and Technology Conference). 

A research paper that the Wu lab involved in entitled "Rapid displacement of SARS-CoV-2 variant Delta by Omicron revealed by allele-specific PCR in wastewater" just published in Water Research. Congrats to the SMART team!

June 2022

Fuqing has been selected for the "International Research Awards on Infectious Diseases" under the category of "Best Research Award" (2022).

Fuqing joined as an co-investigator in the Texas Network COVID Variant Sequencing Project.

Fuqing joined as an co-investigator in the UTH-MDA Population Health Initiative Collaborative Project Award (PI: Fujimoto, K., & Chiao, E.)

May 2022

Jeremiah Oghuan joined the lab and started his research experience. Welcome, Jeremiah!

Anuja Rajendra Godbole joined the lab for her Practicum research! Welcome, Anuja!

Fuqing was invited to give a talk at the Synthetic Biology Young Speaker Series (SynBYSS) on May 19, 2022. His presentation title is: Bridging synthetic biology and epidemiology for pandemic preparedness.

Our paper about Wastewater Surveillance in an Endemic Future has been published in Water Research as 'Making Waves'~! (Big Thanks to our collaborators in MIT, SMART, and NTU! )

April 2022

Fuqing gave a talk about wastewater monitoring of infectious diseases at the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences (EOHS) Research Seminar Series.

March 2022

Fuqing is invited to give a presentation in the Tech Ops meeting for the DSHS Variant Seq Project (DSHS: Texas Department of State Health Services).

February 2022

The Wu lab launched at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston! We are looking for motivated graduate students and Postdocs. Join us!

January 2022

Fuqing received the University of Texas Systems Rising STARs award.

July 2021

Fuqing accepted the offer from UTHealth.