Mariana Matus, PhD

“We actually think of sewage not as waste, but as a resource — a data resource to understand the health of our communities near real-time, and to do public policy in a way that has never been done before.”

Mariana Matus is the co-founder and CEO of Biobot Analytics, a company that tracks emerging trends in disease outbreaks and drug consumption through sewage. She works with cities to monitor the COVID-19 outbreak and tackle the opioid epidemic in the U.S. and Canada.

She received her B.S. in genomics from National Autonomous University of Mexico, her M.S. in biotechnology from Wageningen University and Research, and her Ph.D. in computational biology and systems biology from MIT, where she began studying wastewater epidemiology and founded the MIT Underworlds Project.

From the research program Matus formed Biobot Analytics to detect disease markers, pathogens, drugs, and chemical contaminants in sewage.