‘It would be amazing to give people clean drinking water’

CFAES student Ashlee Balcerzak, who’s from Maumee near Toledo, was a pre-med major at first. Then she took a class at Ohio State’s Stone Lab on Lake Erie and everything changed.

“I got really interested in the actual overall water quality issues and the ecosystems,” she says, “so I ended up changing my major to environmental science.” Her specialty: water science.

Now, as an undergraduate researcher in the college, she’s studying the use of magnetic bacteria to remove algal bloom-causing phosphorus from waters such as Lake Erie. She’s even given a TEDx Toledo talk on it.

“I’m just so passionate about water science,” she says. “I want to help others.”

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