Elizabeth Sams

Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment (CPHEA)

Helping people avoid environmental hazards is an important part of Epidemiology. Finding innovative methods to measure and monitor health is a never-ending quest. Saliva sample collection devices offer an easy-to-use non-invasive tool that collects saliva for various health biomarker analysis. These biomarker measurements provide researchers invaluable data that can be used to monitor population health. Finding an appropriate saliva collection tool can be challenging. In response to this challenge, Elizabeth Sams invented the double-bottom test tube as a simple and low-cost collection tool that reduces processing time and cross-contamination. This test tube can be used for any wet specimen collection.

Read More...

Wendy Jo Davis-Hoover (Retired)

Center for Environmental Solutions and Emergency Response (CESER)

Dr. Davis-Hoover’s inventions include numerous soil remediation technologies for cleaning up hazardous waste sites.  Her technologies utilize microbes to degrade pollutants. 

Dr. Davis-Hoover’s technology utilizing Thermophilic Methanotrophs for high temperature oxidations consists of a group of aerobic microorganisms known as methanotrophs, which have previously been used to degrade organic contaminants.  

Read More...

Kristen Brenner, PhD (Retired)

Dr. Brenner’s patented invention, Method 1604 (MI Medium), is a USEPA-approved membrane filtration method using MI agar or MI broth for the simultaneous detection of  two indicator organisms (Total coliforms and Escherichia coli) in drinking water, source water, ground water, and ambient water in 24 hours or less.  Indicator organisms demonstrate the possible presence of pathogens (disease-producing microorganisms) in the water.  The MI Medium Method can also be used with other types of environmental samples.

Read More...