Haeil joined the LEAPH Lab as a Ph.D. student in the Environmental and Water Resources Engineering Program within the Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech in Fall 2025. In LEAPH, he has a great interest in monitoring environmental microbiomes and tracking pathogen transmission in water environments to support public health.

Haeil graduated from Kyung Hee University in South Korea with B.E and M.E degrees in Civil Engineering. During his graduate studies, he worked as a research assistant in the Environmental Engineering Laboratory, where his research focused on investigating wastewater microbiomes using bioinformatics and multi-omics, and exploring their practical applications (e.g., wastewater treatment system diagnosis and optimization, wastewater-based epidemiological surveillance) through machine learning (ML) approaches. Specifically, he studied the detection and occurrence patterns of foodborne pathogens in municipal wastewater treatment systems, which led to the successful ML-based prediction of nationwide foodborne infectious disease prevalence.

In his spare time, he enjoys taking, editing, and uploading photos and videos while traveling, exploring new eateries and cafes, and watching or playing soccer.

Special Achievements in LEAPH:

• CEE Raymond G. and Madelyn A. Curry Graduate Fellowship, VT, 2025