Sally Weston is a Research Fellow, having been awarded a research fellowship by the Royal Academy of Engineering. Her interdisciplinary research centres on the sustainable provision of safe piped drinking water in low resource communities.

Sally completed her PhD at the University of Sheffield where she demonstrated the ability of dynamic hydraulic behaviour to mobilise material adhered to the inside wall of drinking water distribution systems. As a Research Associate, she applied her hydraulic knowledge to investigate intermittently supplied piped drinking water (University of Sheffield) and develop practitioner-focused tools for water quality management in Canada (Laval Université). At the University of Bristol, Sally synthesised successful experiences of on-grid service expansion (water, sewerage, and mains power) to low-income urban communities across Africa, and developed engineering interventions to reduce the transmission of leptospirosis in Brazilian communities.

Sally’s research fellowship will discover how to improve intermittent water supply for communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. She will explore how these systems perform and connect spatially and temporally variable hydraulic behaviours to the most harmful risks for communities. These results will enable development of new tools that equip water utilities to make positive changes. She is also conceptualising theoretical contaminant exposure pathways in intermittent systems and households (funded by the HWISE Collaborative Accelerator Award in collaboration with the University of Massachusetts, Amherst), and performing fieldwork in Kenya to explore the impact of drinking water supply schedules on public health and wellbeing (funded by the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Health and the Hamish Ogston Foundation).