Texas A&M University-San Antonios wastewater contamination project gets federal boost [Video]

SAN ANTONIO – A Texas A&M University-San Antonio professor is working to keep San Antonians safe with plans on how she’ll use a new grant.

Earlier this month, Congressman Joaquin Castro secured $11 million for community projects around San Antonio, the university said. One million of those $11 million is set to be allocated to Dr. Davida Smyth’s efforts to track harmful wastewater contaminants around the city.

“The way the surveillance ideally works is it’s predictive,” Smyth said. “It sees a pattern before there’s a problem.”

One of the ways to predict is through sequencing. In this case, sequencing identifies the exact parts of molecules within a virus.

“Remember when we were hearing about alpha and delta and omicron [COVID-19 variants]?” Smyth said. “The way that we identified those was through sequencing. So, what I want to do is have it so that our students are doing sequencing. They are doing sequencing in classes here, so they learn how to use …