Overview
Dr. Jeseth Delgado Vela joined Duke University as an Assistant Professor in August 2023. Her work focuses on leveraging environmental biotechnology to improve urban water infrastructure. She integrates molecular tools and modeling to understand how microbial community interactions and dynamics affect engineered water treatment systems. Dr. Delgado Vela earned a Ph.D. and M.S. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Michigan, and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining Duke, she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Howard University. She was a recipient of the Ford Foundation Dissertation Award (2016), was named an Early Career Research Fellow by the Gulf Research Program (2022), and was awarded an NSF CAREER Award (2022).
An updated CV is available here: https://duke.box.com/v/jdv-cv-webversion
Current Appointments & Affiliations
Recent Publications
Autoinducer-2 and acyl homoserine lactones have contrasting effects on ammonia and nitrite-oxidizing sludge
Preprint · January 8, 2026 Full text CiteData-Driven Framework to Quantify Nitrogen Process Resilience at Wastewater Treatment Plants
Journal Article ACS ES&T Water · January 5, 2026 Full text CiteOptimizing models for the prediction of one step ahead extreme flows to wastewater treatment plants using different synthetic sampling methods.
Journal Article Journal of environmental management · September 2025 High-flow events that significantly impact Water Resource Recovery Facility (WRRF) operations are rare, but accurately predicting these flows could improve treatment operations. Data-driven modeling approaches could be used; however, high flow events that ... Full text Open Access CiteRecent Grants
Duke University Program in Environmental Health
Inst. Training Prgm or CMEMentor · Awarded by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences · 2019 - 2029NSF Engineering Research Center for Precision Microbiome Engineering (PreMiEr)
ResearchInvestigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2022 - 2027CAREER: Quorum enhanced sustainable treatment of nitrogen (QuEST-N)
ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2023 - 2027View All Grants