Sandra Dworatzek

Affiliation

SIREM

Track

Biography

Senior Principal scientist at SiREM, B.Sc. and M.Sc in Biology, University of Waterloo Ms. Dworatzek is an environmental microbiologist with advanced technical experience in laboratory treatability studies. Over the past 30 years she has conducted and overseen numerous bench-scale studies examining enhanced remediation of chlorinated solvents, petroleum hydrocarbons, emerging contaminants and other recalcitrant compounds. She has specific technical experience in the design of laboratory treatability studies, evaluating aerobic and anaerobic bioremediation, zero valent iron and chemical oxidation technologies in the laboratory, the scale up of growth of aerobic and anaerobic microbial cultures for bioaugmentation laboratory and field pilot tests. She currently provides senior technical oversight of laboratory treatability studies, and she manages the development and scale-up new bioaugmentation cultures. Ms. Dworatzek provides technical oversight for the development of new bioaugmentation cultures for a wide range of emerging contaminants including 1,2,3-trichlorpropane, perchlorate and sulfolane).This work includes developing novel cultures for BTEX compounds under anaerobic conditions and developing aerobic cultures to remediate 1,4-dioxane. Sandra is the industry lead for a project funded by Genome Canada that has successfully commercialized anaerobic BTX-degrading cultures.