Dr. Yacob has a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder and a BSc degree in Chemical Engineering from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. He has expertise in the areas of mining waste and domestic waste treatments. He leads the disinfection research of source separated urine through laboratory experiments and treatment module development. The laboratory tests involve the use of bacterial and viral surrogates to determine the optimum treatment conditions for a short term (hours) inactivation of pathogens in source separated urine. He is in addition involved in recovery of urine nutrients to biochar and other relevant media. Dr. Yacob is also responsible for developing an odor treatment module based on adsorption on activated carbon/biochar and biofiltration. He is also involved with fecal sludge pyrolysis experiments and development of a kinetic model.