Christopher Sales

Christopher M. Sales is a Professor in the Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering Department at Drexel University, with research expertise in environmental microbiology, environmental biotechnologies, and environmental remediation technologies. He is also an Affiliated Researcher of the C&J Nyheim Plasma Institute of Drexel University, collaborating on the research and development of innovate non-thermal plasma technologies for food safety, public health, and environmental applications.

Prior to this position, he was a post-doctoral researcher in the group of Distinguished Professor Joseph Hughes at Drexel University, studying the biodegradation of nitroaromatic compounds. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, under Lisa Alvarez-Cohen. His doctoral research applied a functional genomics approach to studying the biodegradation of the emerging environmental contaminants, 1,4-dioxane and N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA). He also did undergraduate research with Wen K. Shieh at the University of Pennsylvania working on novel bioreactors for wastewater treatment.

His research group studies microbes and non-thermal plasma technologies at the nexus of food, energy, and water systems using an array of molecular biology, microbiology, and analytical chemistry laboratory techniques with bioinformatic, data science, and computational modeling methods. An active and evolving area of research in his laboratory involves the degradation and the environmental fate and transport of the emerging class of contaminants known as poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).