Alum Wins Indigenous Resilience Leadership Award

Otakuye Conroy-Ben​​​, who earned a doctorate in environmental engineering, is in the inaugural cohort of Indigenous Resilience Leadership awardees. Her research focuses on the biological effects of polluted water, including environmental endocrine disruption, metal and antibiotic resistance in bacteria, and wastewater epidemiology. She currently works as an assistant professor at Arizona State University. 

Conroy-Ben is a nationally recognized engineer in wastewater epidemiology and developed tools to understand COVID-19, opioid misuse, and water quality disparities in Native American communities. With her team, she developed a new method to quantify proteins of the coronavirus and created the Wastewater-Based Epidemiology Tribal Coordination Center and COVID-19 dashboard. Her work centers Indigenous data sovereignty and tribal research ethics while training Native American students and professionals. Tribes who were hard hit with COVID-19 impacts were able to use the results from Dr. Conroy-Ben’s laboratories to make informed and quick decisions during a public health emergency, potentially saving lives for communities that do not have equitable access to data, health or research.