Dr. Belinda Sturm

Dr. Belinda Sturm is an Associate Professor in the Dept of Civil, Environmental & Architectural Engineering at the University of Kansas. Dr. Sturm worked at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, and the University of California, Davis before joining the faculty at KU in 2006. She specializes in biological processes of wastewater treatment and the application of molecular methods in water quality analysis. With KU's Feedstock to Tailpipe Initiative, Dr. Sturm has developed a process to remove nutrients from wastewater while growing algal biomass, which is processed into bio-crude oil. In 2012, the American Academy of Environmental Engineers awarded KU an “Excellence in Environmental Engineering” honor award for this work.

Dr. Sturm performs both lab work at KU and pilot scale studies at the City of Lawrence Wastewater Treatment Plant. She is also the Principal Investigator of the Center for Microbial Metagenomic Community Analysis (CMMCA), which uses advanced high-throughput DNA sequencing and high-performance computing to study microbial community dynamics. In 2016 Dr. Sturm was named as the Edward & Thelma Wohlgemuth Faculty Scholar.