Principal Investigator

Ludmilla Aristilde, Ph.D.

Faculty Profile at Northwestern University
2019–Present, (Tenured) Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, (by courtesy) Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and (by courtesy) Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Northwestern University
2023–Present, Faculty Affiliate, Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy, Northwestern University
2020–Present, Center faculty, Center for Synthetic Biology, Northwestern University

Faculty Profile at Cornell University
2019–2023, Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering, Cornell University
2018–2019, (Tenured) Associate Professor, Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering, Cornell University
2017, Invited Professor by the Université Grenoble-Alpes, Institut des Sciences de la Terre, Grenoble, France
2015, Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future Faculty Fellow
Graduate Field Memberships: (1) Biological and Environmental Engineering; (2) Environmental Toxicology; (3) Soil and Crop Sciences; (4) Microbiology; (5) Geological Sciences; (6) Civil and Environmental Engineering.

2009-2012, NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, Princeton University
2008-2009, Fulbright Scholar, Grenoble, France
2008, Ph.D. Molecular Toxicology, University of California-Berkeley
2004, M.S. Environmental Engineering, University of California-Berkeley
2003, B.F.A. Fine Arts, Cornell University
2003, B.S. Science of Earth Systems, Cornell University

Dr Aristilde’s research group combines experimental and theoretical approaches to figure out the mechanisms responsible for the behavior of organic chemicals in environmental processes with important implications to nutrient cycling, agricultural productivity, ecosystem health, and environmental biotechnology. Current research focus areas: cellular carbon metabolism of organic substrates in environmental bacteria, catalytic dynamics of nutrient-cycling extracellular enzymes, physical chemistry of biomolecules and organic contaminants in environmental matrices, and molecular ecotoxicological targets of organic contaminants.

Growing up in Haiti, Aristilde’s interest in environmental issues was sparked by witnessing the impacts of deforestation on the environment and the links between water pollution and health during an epidemic outbreak of cholera. As an undergrad at Cornell, she enjoyed studying her two passions, art and environmental science. Following summer internships in India and in Peru, she decided to pursue further studies at the interface of environmental chemistry and environmental health. During her graduate studies at UC-Berkeley (supervised by Dr. Garrison Sposito), she worked on the environmental chemistry and toxicology of antibiotics, which are contaminants of emerging concerns due to their extensive use in human and veterinary medicine and their subsequent release into the environment. For her postdoctoral work, she first went to Grenoble, France as a Fulbright scholar to learn different spectroscopic techniques to investigate organo-mineral interactions with Dr. Laurent Charlet and Dr. Bruno Lanson. Prof Aristilde then spent three years as a NSF postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University (supervised by Dr. François M. M. Morel and Dr. Joshua D. Rabinowitz) to learn how to use molecular biology tools including metabolomics approaches to address research questions in environmental science and engineering. After Princeton, Dr. Aristilde started her faculty career at Cornell University in the Summer of 2012 and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2018. She then joined the Northwestern faculty in 2019.

In 2021, Prof. Aristilde received the prestigious Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, a research fellowship awarded based on her contribution to environmental biochemistry and bioengineering [See Northwestern article on the award announcement]. In June 2022, Prof. Aristilde spent a 6-month sabbatical leave with Prof. Lars Angenent at the University of Tuebigen and and met the President of Germany at the end of her stay in Germany. ( [See Northwestern article on the sabbatical time ]