Internship project (BSc/MSc)

The purpose of the drinking water treatment facilities is to produce and to deliver high quality drinking water to the consumer. Water leaving the purification plant generally fulfils all the requirements for potable water, but it is often the case that during the distribution, its quality significantly deteriorates. One of the main causes is biofilm’s growth on the pipe walls of drinking water distribution system (DWDS). The biofilm presence significantly influences not only drinking water safety and aesthetics but also, by increasing the flow resistance, the distribution process itself. One of the parameters representing a strong influence on biofilm formation is a pipe material. However, the fundamentals of this dependence are not yet fully understood.

Offered internship will focus on in-depth characterization of biofilm formed on polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyethylene (PE), the two most common materials applied in construction of the new DWDSs. The comparison between the biofilms will be done by means of various optical imaging (fluorescence microscopy, Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy, etc.), microbiological and molecular techniques. As a result, it is expected to gain more insight into the fundamentals of biofilm formation on discussed pipe materials.

Tasks

• Cultivation of biofilms
• Sampling and analysing biofilm formed in the flow-cell system using optical and microbiological techniques

Requirements

• Background in environmental engineering, water technology, biotechnology or similar
• Actively enrolled as an undergraduate (BSc) or graduate (MSc) student
• Experience in laboratory work is preferred
• Good level English in communication and writing
• Enthusiasm, motivation and independence

Our offer

• Salary of € 175 / month (except for the Erasmus program participants)
• Working in a multidisciplinary international team on innovations in the field of water technology

How to apply

Interested students are invited to send a motivation letter (max. 1 page) and a CV (max. 2 pages) to Olga Sójka ([email protected]). In the e-mail, please, indicate when exactly you can start and what your preferred internship duration is.

Please note, that non-EU citizens need to be enrolled at a Dutch university to be eligible for this project.

I will only respond to the applications send directly to my e-mail address.