The laboratory of Jeffrey Ram at Wayne State University ("RamLab") is pleased to announce that Ahsan Akram has been awarded the 2013 HYDROLAB/IAGLR Student Poster Paper award. The poster showed the work from the Great Lakes Protection Fund supported project on "Automated Ballast Verification." Ahsan has been in the Ram Lab for three years and has been working on the Automated Ballast Verification project for one and a half years. Ahsan's abstract can be seen below.

AKRAM, A.C., MONIRI JAVID, R., SINGH, S.B., REED, E.A., GIZICKI, J.P., NOMAN, S., BASU, A.S. and
RAM, J.L., Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, 48201. Automated Testing Device for Live-Dead Analysisof Ballast Water Organisms.
Methods for verifying ballast water treatments are needed to protect the Great Lakes from discharge of live non-native organisms or pathogens. Here we describe prototypes for automated viability testing using
fluorescein diacetate (FDA), a membrane permeable fluorogen, to differentiate live from dead bacteria and algae. An automated system captured lab cultured, environmental, or ballast organisms on 0.2 um filters, backwashed them with buffer and FDA for subsequent fluorescence measurements, and washed the filters with sterile water for serial automated reuse. Preliminary manual versions of these procedures were also tested. Fluorescence in the presence of live organisms increased linearly over time and decreased linearly with sample dilutions (r2=0.92). After plankton and ballast water treatment with heat or chlorine, fluorescence was greatly decreased, to levels near control (sterile water). Cost reductions in the detection system included changing from fluorescence plate reader (>$20,000), to a fiber optics spectrometer (~$5,000), to recent electronic prototypes costing <$500. Automated measurements of FDA hydrolysis with a reusable filter backwash system under computer control should be applicable to real-time remotecontrolled monitoring of live organisms in ballast water (patent pending).