Diana Aga, PhD, is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Buffalo, where she leads a research team that studies how contaminants affect the environment and human health. Her lab investigates techniques for removing antibiotics from wastewater; how plants – especially food crops – take up pharmaceuticals and engineered nanomaterials; and how levels of veterinary antibiotics in manure decrease over time through long-term storage or waste-management processes like composting and anaerobic digestion.

 

Dr. Aga has analyzed how persistent organic pollutants (such as PBDEs, PCBs, and PFAS) accumulate in the human body, Great Lakes fish, and the environment. Her recent work has focused on the development and application of non-target analysis to discover emerging contaminants that have not been previously reported, including transformation products of pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and industrial chemicals. Aga received her BS from the University of the Philippines at Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines, and her PhD from the University of Kansas.