“Life can be wonderful if you’re not afraid of it, All it takes is Courage, Imagination and a little Dough” Charlie Chaplin

Rita Noelle is a PhD student in Chemical Engineering at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. She is investigating the production of valuable chemicals, energy and organic fertilizer from municipal wastewaters and organic waste. The study will focus on the anaerobic digestion of municipal wastewaters and organic waste, using anaerobic mixed microbial culture. The performance of the process will be assessed by measuring hydrogen, methane, volatile fatty acids, and alcohol’s yield. The material remaining or digestate will be tested on a suite of soil using a range of bio-assays-microbial, process-level and plant-based.

Previously, Rita Noelle has studied Biochemistry (B.A., 2014) and a Professional Applied Microbiology (MSc, 2016), at the Lebanese University in Lebanon. During her final year project, she studied the impact of tertiary wastewater treatment for the removal of pharmaceutical products by the newest technologies, on microbial biodiversity. She was supervised by Dr Claude Daou (Lebanese University, Lebanon) in association with Aix-Marseille University, France and Cadi Ayyad University, Morocco. The project was financed by the Agency of the French University (AUF) – Middle East Office (BMO). Then, she pursued a Research Master’s degree in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (MSc, 2018) at the University of Sheffield, England. Her master’s project focused on the investigation of the Biotechnological and Industrial Purposes of Galdieria sulphuraria, an extremophile green microalga”. She was supervised by Pr. Jim Gilmour. Also, she worked as an intern at the Lebanese Agricultural Research Institute where she conducted soil analysis on different types of soil all over Lebanon and fertilizer analysis. On the community level, she participated in university societies and engaged in several community projects.