Over the next four years, faculty from the School of Engineering and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, including marine sciences professors Evan Ward and George McManus, will use a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) program to study the use of mussels (bivalves), combined with microplastic-degrading bacteria, to remove microplastics from the discharge of wastewater treatment plants. For more information about this project see https://today.uconn.edu/2021/03/how-marine-animals-could-be-used-to-clean-up-natures-big-pollutant-microplastics/.