Visit the Absolute Gene-ius page to learn more about the guest, the hosts, and the Applied Biosystems QuantStudio Absolute Q Digital PCR System.Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has been around for a while and has been used to track drugs of abuse, chemical waste, and pathogens alike. It may not be the most glorious of samples to work with, but wastewater has proven to be a valuable way to do community-wide monitoring. The COVID pandemic brought new attention and focus to WBE once it was shown it could be used to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus to alert public health officials to outbreaks, often before clinical symptoms presented. Our Gene-ius guest for this inaugural episode is Dr. Sarah Philo, a postdoctoral research associate with the Wastewater Surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 and Emerging Public Health Threats Research Coordination Network at the University of Notre Dame. In her conversation with Jordan and Cassie, Sarah talks about how she found this area of research and the “joys” of working with wastewater samples. We learn about how she and her team have used both qPCR and dPCR to detect and quantify SARS-CoV-2 and antimicrobial resistance genes in wastewater.The conversation also touches on several other interesting and informative topics that include a ‘one health’ approach to public health, the importance of team and teamwork in academics, considerations when selecting a graduate research program, the importance of passion in science, and how science is the ‘punk rock’ discipline within academia.  Join us for this fun start of the series and this first season!