Kata Farkas

Kata Farkas is a Research and Innovation Fellow at Bangor University. Kata leads the operational and research side of the national public health surveillance laboratory for public and environmental health. She earned her PhD in microbiology in 2014 at the University of Canterbury (New Zealand). Her thesis investigated the fate and transport of enteric viruses in aquifer media using surface-modified silica beads and MS2 bacteriophage. Prior to her PhD studies she worked at the Water Department of the National Institute of Environmental Health (Hungary) where she was involved in an EU-FP-6 project investigating the seroepidemiology of waterborne protozoa. Her research has been focusing on the fate, behaviour and ecology of microbes and viruses in water environment. She has extensive experience in the characterisation, purification and quantification of viruses from water. She is also familiar with the isolation, identification and quantification of waterborne protozoa, algae, cyanobacteria and bacteria. Kata developed and validated the wide range of qPCR assays for bacteria, viruses and protists used in the national wastewater surveillance programme as well as the assays for Enterovirus/Polio quantification and sequencing.