Professional interests

Bill Sloan’s  research interests are in mathematical modelling of both biological and physical environmental systems.  His first degree was in Mathematics (Heriot-Watt) followed by an MSc in Physical Oceanography (UCNW) then several years in industry with engineering consultancies before undertaking a PhD in Civil Engineering (University of Newcastle upon Tyne).  He defended his thesis on macroscale hydrological modelling in November 1999 and was employed as a lecturer in Civil Engineering at Glasgow University the same year. He was promoted to Professor of Environmental Engineering in 2007 and currently holds an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship.

Recently his research has concentrated on modeling the ecology of engineered and natural microbial communities. In particular on interpreting the output from new molecular methods for characterising microbial communities in situ to estimate biodiversity and describe community assembly. His theoretical  research has found wide practical application in wastewater treatment, microbial fuel cells and biofilm modeling. In addition, Prof. Sloan maintains an interest in hydrological modelling and water resources and has published on a wide variety of topics from macroscale hydrological modelling, through radionuclide transport in groundwater to modelling the evolution of snowcover in the Austrian Alps and water quality in the Himalayas.

Publications

2007

• BATTIN, T. J., SLOAN, W. T., KJELLEBERG, S., DAIMS, H., HEAD, I. M., CURTIS, T. P.and EBERL, L. (2007), "Microbial landscapes: new paths to biofilm research", Nature Reviews Microbiology, Vol. 5(1), pp. 76-81 (DOI: 10.1038/nrmicro1556)
• SLOAN, W. T., WOODCOCK, S., LUNN, M., HEAD, I. M.and CURTIS, T. P. (2007), "Modelling taxa-abundance distributions in microbial communities using environmental sequence data", Microbial Ecology, Vol. 53(3), pp. 443-455 (DOI: 10.1007/s00248-006-9141-x)
• WOODCOCK, S., VAN der GAST, C. J., BELL, T., LUNN, M., CURTIS, T. P., HEAD, I. M.and SLOAN, W. T. (2007), "Neutral assembly of bacterial communities", FEMS Microbiology Ecology, Vol. 62(2), pp. 171-180 (DOI: 10.1111/j.1574-6941.2007.00379.x)

2006

• CURTIS, T. P., HEAD, I. M., LUNN, M., WOODCOCK, S., SCHLOSS, P. D.and SLOAN, W. T. (2006), "What is the extent of prokaryotic diversity?", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Vol. 361(1475), pp. 2023-2037 (DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2006.1921)
• CURTIS, T. P.and SLOAN, W. T. (2006), "Towards the design of diversity: Stochastic models for community assembly in wastewater treatment plants", Water Science and Technology, Vol. 54(1), pp. 227-236 (DOI: 10.2166/wst.2006.391)
• SLOAN, W. T., WOODCOCK, S., LUNN, M., HEAD, I. M.and CURTIS, T. P. (2006), "Modelling taxa-abundance distributions in microbial communities using environmental sequence data", Microbial Ecology (DOI: 10.1007/s00248-006-9141-x)
• SLOAN, W. T., LUNN, M., WOODCOCK, S., HEAD, I. M., NEE, S.and CURTIS, T. P. (2006), "Quantifying the roles of immigration and chance in shaping prokaryote community structure", Environmental Microbiology, Vol. 8(4), pp. 732-740 (DOI: 10.1111/j.1462-2920.2005.00956.x)
• WOODCOCK, S., CURTIS, T. P., HEAD, I. M., LUNN, M.and SLOAN, W. T. (2006), "Taxa-area relationships for microbes: the unsampled and the unseen", Ecology Letters, Vol. 9(7), pp. 805-812 (DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2006.00929.x)

2005

• CURTIS, T. P.and SLOAN, W. T. (2005), "Exploring microbial diversity - A vast below", Science, Vol. 309, pp. 1331-1333

2004

• CURTIS, T. P.and SLOAN, W. T. (2004), "Prokaryotic diversity and its limits: microbial community structure in nature and implications for microbial ecology", Current Opinion in Microbiology, Vol. 7(3), pp. 221-226 (DOI: 10.1016/j.mib.2004.04.010)
• LUNN, M., SLOAN, W. T.and CURTIS, T. P. (2004), "Estimating bacterial diversity from clone libraries with flat rank abundance distributions", Environmental Microbiology, Vol. 6(10), pp. 1081-1085
• SLOAN, W. T., KILSBY, C. G.and LUNN, R. (2004), "Incorporating topographic variability into a simple regional snowmelt model", Hydrological Processes, Vol. 18(17), pp. 3371-3390

2002

• CURTIS, T. P., SLOAN, W. T.and SCANNELL, J. W. (2002), "Estimating prokaryotic diversity and its limits", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 99(16), pp. 10494-10499 (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.142680199)

2001

• CURTIS, T. P., SLOAN, W. T.and SCANNELL, J. W. (2001), "Determining the diversity of the hyperdiverse: The theoretical limits of prokaryotic diversity at large and small scales", 9th International Symposium of Microbiology Ecology, August, 2001, Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
• REUNGOAT, A. F. J.and SLOAN, W. T. (2001), "Classification of river networks", 'River Basin Management', 11-13 September, Cardiff, UK, WIT Press, ISBN: 1-85312-876-7, pp. 23-29