News
March 22, 2023 | Duke Daily
Sanitation Lab Cleaning World's Water
Brian Hawkins, an associate professor at Duke University, and his team are designing a self-contained toilet that requires no infrastructure, can reclaim water for flushing, washing, and irrigation, and can reuse nutrients removed from the water. Their work has taken on added urgency as the climate [...]
April 20, 2022 | PBS North Carolina
Video: Why Flush Toilets are Wasteful
“We use drinking water to flush our toilets,” WaSH-AID research scientist Lena Trotochaud told PBS NC's Rossie Izlar. “We really need to conserve that precious resource.”
February 22, 2022
Urban Stormwater: Exploring New Ways to Remove Nutrient Pollution
We are excited to share that researchers at the Center have secured sponsorship from Oldcastle Infrastructure, a CRH Company, to explore technologies to remove nitrogen from urban stormwater. Nutrient pollution is a widespread and challenging problem in urban stormwater management. Stormwater [...]
September 24, 2021 | The Guardian
The smart toilet era is here! Are you ready to share your analprint with big tech?
Loo design has barely changed in 150 years - until now. Will people trade their privacy for the chance to find out exactly what is in their waste?
September 23, 2021
Why are we using drinking water to flush our toilets?
In many places, including the U.S., up to 25% of potable household water is used to flush the toilet. Contrast this with the estimate that only about 5% of our potable water is used for drinking, and one has to wonder (as we do) if there isn't a better approach in a world of increasing drought, [...]
September 7, 2021 | Wall Street Journal
Smartwatches Track Our Health. Smart Toilets aren't too far behind.
The next frontier of at-home health tracking is flush with data: the toilet. Researchers and companies are developing high-tech toilets that go beyond adding smart speakers or a heated seat. These smart facilities are designed to look out for signs of gastrointestinal disease, monitor blood pressure or tell you that you need to eat more fish, all from the comfort of your personal throne.
August 24, 2021
Stool Image Analysis for Precision Health Monitoring by Smart Toilets
We're excited to share that our latest Smart Toilet research on stool image analysis using machine learning has been published in the Proceedings of Machine Learning Research following the 2021 Machine Learning for Healthcare conference. The interdisciplinary team working on the project includes [...]
August 9, 2021 | Gates Notes
I need to take a Yee!
The Center for WaSH-AID is proud to be a part of Dr. Shannon Yee's team developing a new, low-cost toilet to solve the world’s sanitation crisis.
July 13, 2021 | The Wall Street Journal
A Robot That Finds Your Lost Stuff and More AI-Enabled Gadgets to Come
Analyzing poop is an important way to prevent and diagnose gastrointestinal diseases, but the taboo around collecting it can make screening challenging, according to a 2014 study published in the British Journal of General Practice. Smart toilets could help change that.
May 25, 2021 | SciTechDaily
AI-Powered Smart Toilet May Soon Analyze Poop for Health Problems
An artificial intelligence tool under development at Duke University can be added to the standard toilet to help analyze patients’ stool and give gastroenterologists the information they need to provide appropriate treatment, according to research that was selected for presentation at Digestive [...]
May 25, 2021 | Duke Today
'Smart Toilet' Uses Artifical Intelligence to Monitor Bowel Health
An artificial intelligence tool being developed by Duke scientists can be added to the standard toilet to help analyze patients’ stool and give gastroenterologists the information they need to provide appropriate treatment for chronic issues such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and irritable [...]
March 30, 2021
India Engineering Field Testing Platform
We're pleased to spotlight our talented colleagues in India. The India Engineering Field Testing (IEFT) platform is a team of engineers in Coimbatore, India, who install and test prototype sanitation technologies. Led by the Center's Sonia Grego, the team is part of a large network of public and [...]
March 3, 2021 | Pratt School of Engineering
Comparing the Swab to the Sewer
Using established methods for screening human sewage for the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, Duke University is piloting a study to compare what can be learned from sewage with what can be learned from a rigorous nasal swab testing program.
November 16, 2020 | Duke Today
Duke Awarded $4.5 Million to Advance Global Research Technologies in Sanitation, Public Health
The Duke University Center for Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Infectious Disease (WaSH-AID) received the grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the management of field testing of “reinvented toilets” and other new hygienic technologies in India. The grant will enable the [...]
October 8, 2020 | Science News for Students
A dirty and growing problem: Too few toilets
A flying toilet might sound cool. You could imagine a hovercraft into which you can pee or poop. But the reality is a lot less fun. A flying toilet is a plastic bag into which someone relieves himself. Then? It’s thrown away. Pretty gross, right? So why would anyone do that? Because a great many [...]