1. Becoming Uncultured: Daily Recreational Water Quality Monitoring and Public Notification at Chicago Beaches Using qPCR Abhilasha Shrestha, Ph.D. This presentation focuses on how, following a two-year pilot program of rapid molecular testing of beach water samples, in 2017 Chicago became the first large U.S. city to issue same-day water-quality warnings for all its public recreational beaches and has successfully done so every year after that. The Chicago Park District and University of Illinois-Chicago School of Public Health partnership illustrates that true daily beach monitoring using same-day water quality results is an achievable goal.

2. Standard Control Material for Quantitative Real-Time PCR Recreational Water Quality Monitoring Orin Shanks, Ph.D. This presentation describes a collaboration between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop Standard Reference Material® 2917 (SRM 2917), SRM 2917 “fit for purpose” performance assessment, and implications for qPCR recreational water monitoring implementation.