Rose Kantor

Dr. Rose Kantor (she/they) is an Assistant Research Engineer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering working at the intersection of microbiology, water engineering, and public health. A theme of her work is to detect rare or unculturable organisms and make visible the invisible. She applies advanced techniques such as high-throughput DNA sequencing, digital PCR, and flow cytometry to problems in drinking water and wastewater.  Dr. Kantor’s background in microbiology spans studies of mining wastewater treatment, discovery of novel CRISPR-Cas for industry, and advanced treatment of drinking water for potable reuse. More recently, she has worked in the (re)emerging field of wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) for public health. From 2020-2022, she co-directed the COVID Wastewater Epidemiology for the Bay Area (COVID-WEB) at UC Berkeley, coordinating wastewater testing and high-throughput sequencing for SARS-CoV-2 to inform public health. Presently, Dr. Kantor co-leads the Pandemic Readiness through Virus Epidemiology in Wastewater (PREViEW) project at UC Berkeley, in collaboration with UC Davis, UCSF, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory through the UC National Lab Fees Research Program. Dr. Kantor earned a B.A. in Biology from Carleton College and a PhD in Microbiology at UC Berkeley (2016) and completed postdoctoral research with Professor Kara Nelson.

In their free time, Dr. Kantor enjoys hiking Bay Area trails, dancing, and cooking.

You can find more information about Dr. Kantor’s work here: https://rosekantor.github.io/