Rate My Professor Gilda Carvalho

Gilda Carvalho is an Associate Professor at the Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology (ACWEB) and the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Queensland. She serves as Group Leader of the Drinking and Recycled Water research group and leads research in Environmental Bioengineering, with a particular focus on microbial processes for water and wastewater treatment and resource recovery. Her research interests encompass the removal of Chemicals of Emerging Concern (such as pharmaceuticals, PFAS, pesticides, and heavy metals), Biological Nutrient Removal (BNR), biofilm systems, membrane processes for water and wastewater treatment and reuse, and resource recovery from waste and wastewater streams, including acidogenesis and biopolymer production, particularly polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA). A key aspect of her work involves applying molecular tools to connect microbial ecology and activity in biological systems to overall process performance.

Carvalho holds a PhD in Biotechnology and has a distinguished career in environmental biotechnology. Prior to her current role, she served as Senior Researcher at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa from 2015 to 2017 and held positions at FCT/UNL and Instituto de Biologia Experimental e Tecnológica (IBET) in Portugal from 2004 to 2012. She has published over 90 peer-reviewed papers and contributed to more than 40 research projects, many multinational collaborations involving industrial partners. Key publications include "Editorial: Unlocking the value of wastewater: innovative biotechnologies and bioprocesses for resource recovery in a circular economy approach" (2025), "The effectiveness and role of phages in the disruption and inactivation of clinical P. aeruginosa biofilms" (2023), "The impact of pH on the anaerobic and aerobic metabolism of Tetrasphaera-enriched polyphosphate accumulating organisms" (2023), and "Electrochemical oxidation processes for PFAS removal from contaminated water and wastewater: fundamentals, gaps and opportunities towards practical implementation" (2022). She is dedicated to teaching and learning, with extensive experience in Chemical, Environmental, and Bioprocess Engineering courses, coordinates the Postgraduate Programs in Urban Water Engineering, and has supervised more than 20 PhD students.