Ludmilla Aristilde

Ludmilla Aristilde
Born
Haiti
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
Cornell University
Scientific career
InstitutionsNorthwestern University
Cornell University
ThesisA mechanistic investigation of the environmental chemodynamics of fluoroquinolone antibiotics (2008)

Ludmilla Aristilde is an American engineer who is a professor at Northwestern University. Her research considers environmental biochemistry and bioengineering. She was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Bessel Research Award.

Early life and education

Aristilde grew up in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti.[1][2][3] She became interested in environmental science because of the environmental devastation she witnessed as a child, including deforestation and water pollution.[4] Dirty water drove an epidemic of cholera; deforestation caused flooding and erosion.[2] She studied the science of earth systems at Cornell University, where, as a keen artist, she also completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts.[4] She moved to University of California, Berkeley for graduate studies, where she majored in environmental engineering and became interested in toxicology. She stayed in Berkeley for her doctoral research, investigating the chemodynamics of fluoroquinolone antibiotics with Garrison Sposito.[5] Fluoroquinolone antibiotics have a broad spectrum of antibacterial activity, but impact biogeochemical processes through soil bacteria. As the antibiotics strongly bond to soils, they impact their degradation and bioavailability.[5] Aristilde combined experimental and theoretical approaches to understand the environmental impacts of ciprofloxacin.[5] She was a postdoctoral researcher in Grenoble, where she held a Fulbright Program scholarship and developed spectroscopic techniques to understand interactions between organic materials and minerals.[4] She completed a National Science Foundation postdoc at Princeton University, where she learned about metabolomics and molecular biology, and joined Cornell University in 2018.[4]

Research and career

Aristilde joined Northwestern University in 2019. Her research uses molecular and computational approaches to understand the environmental and biological impacts of chemical systems. She looks to use nature's innate ability to breakdown chemicals to get rid of pollutants.[2] She has demonstrated that wastewater can breakdown plastics, and use the products for fuel.[6]

In 2021, Aristilde was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Bessel Research Award.[7] As part of the award, she worked with the University of Tübingen to explore new strategies to recover carbon from biological waste.[7]

Aristilde's research looks to understand the metabolism of organic systems in environmental bacteria, the dynamics of nutrient-cycling enzymes and the physical chemistry of biomolecules.[8] She has demonstrated that soil bacteria (Pseudomonas putida) reorganize their metabolism to survive on lignin, which could inform the design of microbial factories to convert plant waste into sustainable fuels.[9] The Pseudomonas putida achieve this by regulating their metabolic pathways to extract energy from lignin without exhausting itself.[10]

Selected publications

  • Rebecca A Wilkes; L Aristilde (17 April 2017). "Degradation and metabolism of synthetic plastics and associated products by Pseudomonas sp.: capabilities and challenges". Journal of Applied Microbiology. 123 (3): 582–593. doi:10.1111/JAM.13472. ISSN 1364-5072. PMID 28419654. Wikidata Q38728815.
  • Ludmilla Aristilde; Claire Marichal; Jocelyne Miéhé-Brendlé; Bruno Lanson; Laurent Charlet (1 October 2010). "Interactions of oxytetracycline with a smectite clay: a spectroscopic study with molecular simulations". Environmental Science & Technology. 44 (20): 7839–7845. doi:10.1021/ES102136Y. ISSN 0013-936X. PMID 20866047. Wikidata Q42877496.
  • H. Richter; B. Molitor; H. Wei; W. Chen; L. Aristilde; L. T. Angenent (2016). "Ethanol production in syngas-fermenting Clostridium ljungdahlii is controlled by thermodynamics rather than by enzyme expression". Energy & Environmental Science. 9 (7): 2392–2399. doi:10.1039/C6EE01108J. ISSN 1754-5692. Wikidata Q61942090.

References

  1. ^ "Ludmilla Aristilde". American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
  2. ^ a b c Chase, Brett (2024-10-25). "At this Northwestern professor's lab, plastic-eating microbes show promise to gobble up microplastics in nature". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2025-09-13.
  3. ^ "Soil Secrets". Northwestern Engineering. Retrieved 2025-09-13.
  4. ^ a b c d "Principal Investigator | Aristilde Research Group at Northwestern University". aristilde.northwestern.edu. Retrieved 2025-09-13.
  5. ^ a b c "A mechanistic investigation of the environmental chemodynamics of fluoroquinolone antibiotics | WorldCat.org". search.worldcat.org. Retrieved 2025-09-13.
  6. ^ "Wastewater bacteria can breakdown plastic for food". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 2025-09-13.
  7. ^ a b "Prof. Ludmilla Aristilde Receives Bessel Research Award". Northwestern Engineering. Retrieved 2025-09-13.
  8. ^ "Aristilde, Ludmilla | Faculty | Northwestern Engineering". www.mccormick.northwestern.edu. Retrieved 2025-09-13.
  9. ^ "Bacteria Rewire Digestive Systems to Turn Plant Waste Into Power". Northwestern Engineering. Retrieved 2025-09-13.
  10. ^ Zhou, Nanqing; Wilkes, Rebecca A.; Chen, Xinyu; Teitel, Kelly P.; Belgrave, James A.; Beckham, Gregg T.; Werner, Allison Z.; Yu, Yanbao; Aristilde, Ludmilla (2025-08-29). "Quantitative decoding of coupled carbon and energy metabolism in Pseudomonas putida for lignin carbon utilization". Communications Biology. 8 (1) 1310. doi:10.1038/s42003-025-08723-3. ISSN 2399-3642. PMC 12397404. PMID 40883435.
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