Ph. D. Brigita Dejus, Leading researcher, Water Research and Environmental Biotechnology Laboratory, Riga Technical University.
Every piece of research is like reaching for the horizon; behind every achieved goal there is another one – as long as the spirit of the researcher is alive, it does not stop.
Brigita is a young RTU researcher whose research work is related to water, wastewater monitoring and treatment. She developed her PhD thesis while studying at RTU and the Royal Swedish Institute of Technology (Kungliga Tekniska högskolan – KTH), studying the potential of using microscopic fungi in the treatment of wastewater from pharmaceutically active substances. Brigita continues her research at RTU, developing the potential of wastewaterbased epidemiology.
Brigita has been interested in wildlife, the environment and biology since childhood, but by the end of primary school it was clear that she would study water. Water, she says, is, after all, a substance that no living creature, including humans, can do without. Although she was initially unsure as to whether she wanted to spend her everyday life in a laboratory, her short experience in other fields soon made her realise that academia, science and research were her heart’s desire.
Her doctoral thesis focused on a topical issue – pollution from pharmaceuticals. With the increasing amount of medicines that people consume on a daily basis, pharmaceutically active substances are increasingly likely to end up in the environment. Most wastewater treatment plants are not yet able to fully eliminatethis pollution. For example, fish in a lake polluted with sedatives can become apathetic and fearless of natural enemies, which can disrupt and affect the lake’s eco- and biosystems. Microscopic fungi could be one alternative for future wastewater treatment: they multiply rapidly and the enzymes they produce can break down pharmaceutically active substances to a state that no longer poses a threat to the environment.
With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, a new research direction has developed in the RTU Water Research and Environmental Biotechnology Laboratory – Brigita and her colleagues are investigating how wastewater monitoring can be used to monitor and analyse the spread of Covid-19 and other diseases in society. This is particularly important in epidemiologically complex situations, when predicting the course and spread of diseases, or when allowing decision-makers to draw important conclusions about public health in general. The current focus of Brigita’s work is the development of new methods for concentrating wastewater with the aim of improving the accuracy of wastewater monitoring.
Alongside her work as a researcher, Brigita also works at the RTU Science and Innovation Centre to support other young scientists. In this role, she sees it as her mission to bring together scientists, academics and entrepreneurs, contributing to solving longterm problems and issues through scientific methods. Digital twins, building rockets, the potential of algae in phosphorus removal from wastewater, eco-friendly concrete – these are just some of the projects that RTU students are currently working on with Brigita’s involvement.
Brigita is convinced that science must not remain confined to the corridors of laboratories, which is why she has made the promotion of water science – making research public and explaining the importance of water conservation to the public – an important aspect of her work. This is one of the reasons why she is also involved in the EC mission on oceans and waters, where she serves as a council member and clean water ambassador for Europe.
As a researcher, Brigita’s main driving force is the pursuit of new knowledge – it improves, never stops and is the main contribution she can make to our country.
The project "Research Latvia 2024" is implemented within the framework of the ERDF project “Integrated National Level Measures to Strengthen the Representation of Latvian Research and Development Interests in the European Research Area”, No. 1.1.1.5/17/I/002.