Thomas Egli

Prof. emer. Dr. Thomas Egli was Head of the Department for Environmental Microbiology and leader of the Research group Drinking Water Microbiology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag). He was teaching at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) where he was appointed as a Titular Professor for Environmental Microbiology, and at the Universities of Basel and Zurich. After his retirement in 2012 he founded “MICROBES-IN-WATER GmbH” that consults on microbiology and hygiene in aquatic systems, particularly drinking water.

Educated as a Biotechnologist at ETH Zurich and a Post-Doc in the UK, he joined Eawag in 1982. His research was focused on biodegradation of organic pollutants and microbial growth at very low nutrient concentrations. 2003 he moved into drinking water microbiology and developed with his group flow cytometric methods for the fast detection of microbial cells and pathogens in water.

He is author of >200 peer-reviewed scientific publications and some 20 book chapters (SCI H-index: 59). He was given the Mülheim Water Award in 2010 for developing the flow cytometric total cell count method. He was as a Swiss Delegate for the OECD, was appointed as an Ambassador of the International Society for Microbial Ecology and served on many scientific boards.