Department of Civil Engineering
The Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Bristol has three research groups: Dynamics Engineering, Water, Environmental Management and Health, and Systems and Safety which collaborate widely with academic and industrial partners from across the engineering, science and social science disciplines, and from around the world.
The Aquatest project is located within the Water, Environmental Management and Health group. Based around the Water and Environmental Research Centre and the new Water and Health Research Centre, this group addresses the management of flood risks, with emphasis on technologies for measurement and modelling of rainfall events and the consequent flood flows and environmental impacts. It has a particular interest in radar hydrology and also develops appropriate technologies for improving water quality in developing countries.
Roles in the project include
- Engineering design
- Scientific coordination
- Project management
- Dissemination activities
- Working with industrial partners on the production and scaling up of the Aquatest device. For example, there has been a close collaboration with Kinneir Dufort, a product design company, on the design and prototyping of the Aquatest device.
People involved
Professor Stephen Gundry
Project Director, Member of the management board
A professor of Environmental Engineering, Stephen Gundry is the Director of the Water and Health Research Centre at the University of Bristol.
He was the coordinator of an earlier research project ‘The policy implications of the contamination of rural water in Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe (AQUAPOL)’ and was coordinator of the Aquatest Preparatory Study.
He is a member of the World Health Organization Network to promote home water treatment and safe storage, and the Health-related water microbiology group within the International Water Association. He has worked at the University of Bristol since 2001.
In addition to overall coordination of the project, Stephen leads the engineering design of the device and incubator.
Dr Alan Feest
Alan is the programme director for the Water and Environmental Management Masters course at the University of Bristol. He works as a consultant in biodiversity assessment and was a founding member of the Institute of Ecologists and Environmental Managers and the Institute of Environmental Management and Audit
After working in both industry and the Civil Service, Alan obtained a BSc in Biological Sciences (Ecology) from University of Exeter and then a PhD (Ecology of Myxogastrids) from University of Bristol which was continued as a post-doctoral research.
Alan is responsible for raising safety and environmental concerns and supervising the Life Cycle Analysis of the Aquatest device.
Professor Dick Clements
Dick is an Emeritus Professor in Engineering Mathematics at the University of Bristol.
He trained as an Aeronautical Engineer but has been involved in the application of mathematics to a broad spectrum of engineering systems for over 35 years. Further information about which can be found at Dick’s Homepage.
Dick Clements has been supervising the mathematical modeling of the Aquatest device.
Dr Tahmina Ajmal
Research Associate
Tahmina Ajmal worked on the project from 2009-2010 to develop an optical reader for the device. She received her PhD from University of Essex in 2007 on Optical Cryptography. After completing her PhD, she worked for nine months as a part time research officer at University of Essex for the development of a low cost multi-access network on IST European Project MUSE (Multi-Service Access Everywhere) project.
She has also been a Lecturer at Aligarh Muslim University in India, where she developed low cost fiber sensors including those for the measurement of liquid density, level and temperature.
Robert Matthews
Research Assistant
Rob Matthews joined the Aquatest project after completing an MSc in Environmental Engineering at Imperial College London where he was awarded the Black and Veatch Prize; he spent a portion of this time working in Nepal studying the use of natural disinfectants for drinking water. Prior to this he studied Product Design Engineering at the University of Glasgow and Glasgow School of Art. Since joining Aquatest Rob has been working in the design team on the development of the device and the field incubator.
Robert Bain
Research Assistant
Having recently graduated from Cambridge, Robert has joined Aquatest Engineering design team. He was introduced to low-cost water testing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) thanks to Amy Smith and her D-lab and wrote his final year thesis on the topic. Since starting with Aquatest he has been working on the design of the device - developing statistical models and sizing the chambers to achieve “bands of quality” results that are simple to interpret and meaningful to the user.
Hayley Sharp
Student Researcher
Hayley contributed to the project during her fifth year (2008-2009) at Bristol University studying Engineering Design, and carried out a final-year project with Aquatest investigating the feasibility of a portable solar-powered incubator system. In 2007 Hayley was awarded funding from Engineers Without Borders UK and the Royal Academy of Engineering to carry out a project on community water systems in Ecuador, and has also worked on appropriate technology projects in Havana and Boston.