Lee Bryant is a Lecturer in the Water, Environment and Infrastructure Research (WEIR) group within the Architecture and Civil Engineering Dept. Her research interests include biogeochemistry and cross-media mass transfer with a link to sustainable geoenvironmental engineering. Her key focus is characterising how sediment-water fluxes influence water quality in lakes, drinking-water supply reservoirs and oceans.

Lee performed her doctoral work jointly between Virginia Tech (Virginia, USA) and Eawag (Lucerne, CH); this research focused on the effects of dynamic turbulence on benthic oxygen conditions and the influence of variations in turbulence and oxygen levels on the biogeochemical cycling of manganese and iron. After obtaining her PhD degree in 2010, Lee did postdoctoral work at Duke University (North Carolina, USA) and ETH (Zurich, CH) which focused on using voltammetric methods to measure reduced metal species within the sediment and the water column. She then obtained a postdoctoral-research position at the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel – GEOMAR (Kiel, DE) to assess oxygen fluxes using the eddy-correlation method and to evaluate nutrient cycling in oceanic oxygen minimum zones.

Lee joined the University of Bath as a Prize Fellow in 2014 and became a Lecturer in 2016.

Research

Lee’s research is based on how turbulence and oxygen levels, both natural (e.g., via wind) and engineered (e.g., via hypolimnetic oxygenation systems), affect the 1) biogeochemical cycling of nutrients and metals and 2) corresponding water quality and ecosystem health.

Lee’s expertise and research focuses on biogeochemical cycling in aquatic systems with specialization in the mass transport of oxygen, metals and nutrients within the water column and at the sediment-water interface within both marine and freshwater systems. She typically uses a largely field-based approach to her research and has a solid background in using in water-quality-based in situ sampling and the use of microsensor and voltammetric technology to monitor and model these processes. Her research group is currently focusing on:

1. The influence of aeration on the biogeochemistry of drinking-water-supply reservoirs
2. Effects of seasonal algal blooms on marine benthic oxygen dynamics
3. The geochemical, microbial and hydrologic characteristics of storm runoff loads within an informal settlement
4. The influence of bioturbation and respiration on oxygen and trace metal cycling

Interested in supervising students studying:

• Biogeochemical cycling
• Lake and reservoir management
• Using oxygenation and other engineered methods to improve and/or maintain water quality