Ms. Ayuka Muramatsu and Ms. Mai Sato, undergraduate students of Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, received the JSWE-LION Best Student Poster Presentation Award at the 60th Annual Conference of the Japan Society on Water Environment

　Ms. Ayuka Muramatsu, a 4th-year undergraduate student, and Ms. Mai Sato, a 3rd-year undergraduate student of Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering (supervisor: Prof. Eiji Haramoto, Interdisciplinary Center for River Basin Environment), received the JSWE-LION Best Student Poster Presentation Award at the 60th Annual Conference of the Japan Society on Water Environment (JSWE) held at Hokkaido University on March 17-19, 2025. This award is given to undergraduate, technical college, and junior college students for their excellent poster presentations to promote research motivation. At this time, 21 out of 127 students received this award.
　The title of Ms. Muramatsu’s presentation is “Application of the Pegcision? method to pathogenic viruses and bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes in wastewater.” She applied the Pegcision? method, a concentration method using magnetic nanoparticles, to detect various pathogenic viruses, bacteria, and antibiotic resistance genes in wastewater, and demonstrated that the method is suitable for conducting wastewater-based epidemiology in the COVID-19 era. This research was conducted as a joint research project between Haramoto laboratory and JNC Corporation.
　The title of Ms. Sato’s presentation is “Investigation of the presence of antibiotic resistance Escherichia coli in wastewater in Yamanashi Prefecture.” She reported the results of antibiotic resistance tests using 21 antibiotics on E. coli isolated from influent samples of a wastewater treatment plant to understand the trend of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the diversity of resistance patterns in a city.
　Ms. Muramatsu said, “I am honored to receive such a prestigious award. I am grateful to Prof. Haramoto and the laboratory members for their guidance and support of my research, and to JNC Corporation for their cooperation. I wish for further development in this field.” Ms. Sato said, “I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Prof. Haramoto and the laboratory members for their cooperation. I received a lot of opinions from this presentation from perspectives that I could not have realized on my own, and I would like to make use of them in my future research.”