Emma Lancaster
Postdoctoral Scholar
Environmental Health Sciences
Biography
Emma’s research employs an interdisciplinary approach, integrating microbiology, metagenomics, epidemiology and geospatial analysis to characterize environmental quality and its relation to human health. Her work focuses on wastewater-based epidemiology of COVID-19, the human gut microbiome and community health, freshwater cyanobacterial exposure and associated neurodegenerative risks such as Alzheimer’s disease, the water quality and microbiomes of urban stormwater systems, and environmental drivers of infectious disease dynamics. Emma conducts research in Dr. Jiyoung Lee’s Environmental Microbiology and One Health Lab (EMOHL), Dr. Laura Pomeroy’s Modeling Infectious Diseases Lab and Dr. Jianyong Wu’s Environmental and Spatial Epidemiology (EASE) Lab within the Division of Environmental Health Sciences.
Education
- PhD
- Environmental Health Sciences, The Ohio State University, 2024
- BS
- Environmental Sciences, University of Cincinnati, 2019
- BA
- Biological Sciences, University of Cincinnati, 2019
Select publications
- Chen, Z., Li, L., Kim, M., Lancaster, E., Lee, J., Costa, O. (2025). Characterization of microbial communities in the rhizosphere and water of a field-scale artificial floating island system for nutrient removal. Environmental Pollution, 384, 126992. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2025.126992
- King, J., Lancaster, E., Murphy, A., Lee, J., Dannemiller, K. (2025). Case report: contamination of drinking water distribution system by Exophiala-dominated biofilm in Midwestern United States. J Water Health, 2025173. https://doi.org/10.2166/wh.2025.173
- Lancaster, E., Martin, J., Winston, R., & Lee, J. (2024). Urban stormwater green infrastructure: Evaluating its public health service role using microbial source tracking and bacterial community analyses. Water Research, 259, 121818. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2024.121818
- Mills, M., Davis, A., Lancaster, E., Boseung, C., Winston, R., Martin, J., & Lee, J. (2024). Longitudinal Analysis of Urban Stormwater Microbiome and Resistome from Watersheds with and without Green Infrastructure using Long-Read Sequencing. Water Research, 259, 121873. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2024.121873
- Lancaster, E., & Lee, J. (2023). Advanced preparedness for drinking water emergency: Ensuring safe microbial quality with rapid microbial source tracking and E. coli methods. Environmental Advances, 13, 100426. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envadv.2023.100426
- Lancaster, E., Byrd, K., Ai, Y., & Lee, J. (2022). Socioeconomic status correlations with confirmed COVID-19 cases and SARS-CoV-2 wastewater concentrations in small-medium sized communities. Environmental Research, 215, 114290. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2022.114290
- Lancaster, E., & Lee, J. (2022). Potential environmental and health risk when returning to normal amidst COVID-19 vaccination. Current Opinion In Environmental Science & Health, 100328. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coesh.2022.100328
- Ai, Y., He, F., Lancaster, E., & Lee, J. (2022). Application of machine learning for multi-community COVID-19 outbreak predictions with wastewater surveillance. Plos one, 17(11), e0277154. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277154