Pre 2025
"Research is the distance between an idea and its realization."
- David Sarnoff
Promoting Sustainable Development In Bioinformatics and Wastewater Environmental Surveillance to Support Public Health
The Alliance for Pathogen Surveillance Innovations (APSI-India) is a pan-India, multi-city consortium aimed at strengthening India’s public health surveillance capacity through advanced genomic tools. This project focuses on leveraging wastewater genomic surveillance to enable early detection and monitoring of pathogens of public health importance.
By systematically analyzing wastewater samples, the initiative seeks to track SARS-CoV-2 variants, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes, and broader microbial diversity, thereby complementing traditional clinical surveillance systems and enabling population-level insights into infectious disease dynamics
As a pilot study, the project will test and implement PHA4GE data standards using wastewater genomic datasets collected from three geographically diverse Indian cities New Delhi (Delhi), Sonipat (Haryana), and Shillong (Meghalaya). Samples will be drawn from multiple wastewater systems, including sewage treatment plants, open drains, and natural water bodies, capturing inputs such as municipal waste, industrial effluents, and selected agricultural run-off sites. The study spans varied site types, including institutional settings like universities as well as natural environments, and incorporates contextual chemical and physical attributes such as weather and temperature to enhance data interpretability and comparability
The project is led by an interdisciplinary team comprising genomics data standard experts, molecular biologists, public health professionals, and computer science researchers with expertise in data ontologies. Together, the team will act as genomic data brokers, facilitating the conversion of locally generated pathogen genomics data currently aligned with platforms such as GISAID and BioSample into PHA4GE-compliant standards. Through this effort, the project aims to improve data interoperability, support sustainable bioinformatics practices, and contribute to scalable, standardized wastewater-based public health surveillance in India
