Dr. Shilva Shrestha

Biography

Shilva Shrestha is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering. His research focuses on developing innovative sustainable biotechnologies for wastewater treatment and resource recovery, as well as biofuels and platform chemicals. His work promotes a circular carbon economy by integrating top-down and bottom-up approaches in microbiome engineering to convert organic waste streams and lignocellulosic biomass into high-value products. Shrestha takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining bioprocess and chemical engineering with microbial ecology, and life-cycle assessment modeling to make biotechnologies environmentally sustainable and cost-competitive. He collaborates with diverse stakeholders, including municipalities, national laboratories, and industry partners, to accelerate the adoption of these biotechnologies. His research interests also include studying microorganisms of industrial and environmental relevance using systems biology and metabolic engineering approaches. Shrestha holds a bachelor's degree in biotechnology from Kathmandu University in Nepal, a master's degree in molecular biosciences and bioengineering from the University of Hawaii, and a PhD in environmental engineering from the University of Michigan, which he earned in 2020. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Joint BioEnergy Institute at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab from 2021 to 2023 before joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins.

Research Interests

Experience