What happens to an infectious agent once it leaves the human body? Well, it ends up in our cars, airplanes, food, water and soil. If we know how that contagion behaves “in the wild”, then we’ll be able to kill it, filter it, or otherwise prevent it from proliferating, and potentially improve the lives of millions of people in the process. This is the study of Environmental Microbiology and it’s a topic that today’s guest has spent more than 30 years trying to understand.