Joe Brown

Assistant Professor, Environmental Engineering Georgia Tech College of Engineering

  • Atlanta GA

Joe Brown’s research interests include water infrastructure sustainability and detection methods for pathogens in the environment.

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Biography

Joe Brown is an assistant professor in environmental engineering. Brown comes to Georgia Tech from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where he served as a lecturer in the Department of Disease Control, Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases. Brown’s research and teaching interests are at the intersection of environmental engineering and public health, including water infrastructure sustainability, detection methods for pathogens and pathogen indicators in the environment, water treatment technology characterization and innovation, and human health effects of exposure to waterborne pathogens. He is a Professional Engineer (PE) with licensure in North Carolina and Alabama.

Areas of Expertise

Water and Wastewater Microbiology
Antimicrobial Resistance in the Environment
Engineering Applications in Underserved Communities
Bioaerosols

Selected Accomplishments

Women in Engineering (WIE) Faculty Teaching Award, Georgia Institute of Technology

2017

NSF CAREER Award

2017

CEE Excellence in Research Program Development Award

2016

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Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Ph.D.

Environmental Sciences and Engineering

2007

University of Cambridge

M.Phil.

Environment and Development

2003

University of Alabama

B.S.

Civil and Environmental Engineering

2001

Selected Articles

Selecting household water treatment options on the basis of World Health Organization performance testing protocols

Environmental Science & Technology

Aaron Bivins, Nikki Beetsch, Batsirai Majuru, Maggie Montgomery, Trent Sumner, Joe Brown

2019

The World Health Organization’s International Scheme to Evaluate Household Water Treatment Technologies serves to benchmark microbiological performance of existing and novel technologies and processes for small-scale drinking water treatment according to a tiered system. There is widespread uncertainty around which tiers of performance are most appropriate for technology selection and recommendation in humanitarian response or for routine safe water programming. We used quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) to evaluate attributable reductions in diarrheal disease burden associated with water treatment technologies meeting the three tiers of performance under this Scheme, across a range of conditions. According to mean estimates and under most modeling conditions, potential health gains attributable to microbiologically improved drinking water are realized at the middle tier of performance: “comprehensive protection: high pathogen removal (★★)” for each reference pathogen. The highest tier of performance may yield additional marginal health gains where untreated water is especially contaminated and where adherence is 100%. Our results highlight that health gains from improved efficacy of household water treatment technology remain marginal when adherence is less than 90%. While selection of water treatment technologies that meet minimum WHO efficacy recommendations for comprehensive protection against waterborne pathogens is critical, additional criteria for technology choice and recommendation should focus on potential for correct, consistent, and sustained use.

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The Critical Role of Compliance in Delivering Health Gains from Environmental Health Interventions

The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene

Joe Brown, Michael AL Hayashi, Joseph NS Eisenberg

2019

Gains in reducing childhood disease burden rely heavily on effective means of preventing environmental exposures. For many environmental health interventions, such as point-of-use water treatment, sanitation, or cookstoves, exposures are strongly influenced by user behaviors and the degree to which participants adhere to the prescribed preventive measures. In this commentary, we articulate the need for increased attention on user behaviors—critically, the careful measurement and inclusion of compliance—to strengthen exposure assessment and health impact trials in environmental health intervention research. We focus here on water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions to illustrate the problem with the understanding that this issue extends to other environmental health interventions.

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Development and field testing of low‐cost, quantal microbial assays with volunteer reporting as scalable means of drinking water safety estimation

Journal of Applied Microbiology

Andrew Loo, Aaron Bivins, Viji John, Samantha Becker, Shannon Evanchec, Alexandra George, Valeria Hernandez, Jean Mullaney, Lorenzo Tolentino, Rebecca Yoo, Pranav Nagarnaik, Pawan Labhasetwar, Joe Brown

2019

To evaluate a low‐cost water quality test for at‐scale drinking water safety estimation in rural India.

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