Dr. MacDonald is the Assistant Director of the JHU Global Water Program.  He received his PhD in 2010 from Princeton University in Civil and Environmental Engineering, where his research focused biogeochemical controls of contaminant transport, rural defluoridation strategies for India, and global water policy. Dr. MacDonald joined the Global Water Program, a multidisciplinary research enterprise, out of a belief that water lies at the intersection of engineering, science, policy, and public health, and that we cannot solve problems in one area without addressing the others.    

Biogeochemistry describes the interactions between living organisms, minerals, and dissolved chemicals in the environment, and Dr. MacDonald has experience studying the role of iron oxides in controlling the behavior of arsenic. This work includes the study of fundamental kinetics of bacterially-driven iron reduction, the influence of flooding cycles and iron oxides on arsenic retention in contaminated, planted mesocosm experiments, and field validation of redox controls on arsenic mobility in an industrially contaminated wetland.   In many places throughout the world, such environmental transport mechanisms of arsenic links to drinking water supply contamination in groundwater, posing a public health hazard to millions of people. To address the health of the environment, therefore, is to address our own health.  

Like the arsenic problem, drinking groundwater sources with naturally high levels of fluoride can cause debilitating skeletal and dental fluorosis throughout the world. Fluoride problems in many parts of India are severe, and Dr. MacDonald has worked to develop a prototype filtration technology with the potential to lead to an effective, sustainable treatment strategy to halt the fluorosis endemic in rural villages.   

Alongside collaborators at Princeton, George Washington, and the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida, Dr. MacDonald is currently working on a paper that proposes mechanisms for improving access to water and sanitation throughout the world through global treaties and loan agreements.  

 Dr. MacDonald has received numerous fellowships and honors, including the EPA STAR Graduate Fellowship, Upton Fellowship the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University, the National Waters Research Institute Fellowship, the New Jersey Water Resources Research Institute Fellowship, and the Princeton Environmental Institute Fellowship in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy.  He was the co-author of an ENVIRON Foundation grant for fluoride mitigation and has participated in the Microbial Diversity Course in the Marine Biology Lab at Woods Hole, MA.  

Dr. MacDonald organized a high level conference at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center on Accelerating sustainable, people-centered integrated water services for the poor, from August 29 through September 1, 2011.

Luke MacDonald's Resume

• The Efficacy of Water Based Health Interventions
• An Investigation of Drinking Water Quality in the Peruvian Amazon
• Development of a Detection and Early Warning System for Malaria Risk in the Amazon

• Breaking the Cycle of Neglect and Failure Through Evidence-Based Research
• Accelerating sustainable, people-centered integrated water services for the poor
• An Investigation of Drinking Water Quality in the Peruvian Amazon