Dr Viraragavan plays an integral role in the SAMRC’s Wastewater Surveillance and Research Programme, where she uses next generation sequencing to identify and monitor SARS-CoV-2 variants present in wastewater across South Africa. Dr Viraragavan’s wastewater sequencing results was one of the first to publicly report on the Omicron variant detected in November 2021. She has co-authored two publications and delivered two conference presentations in 2022 pertaining to SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern circulating in South Africa’s wastewater treatment plants. Her forthcoming research aims to develop novel bioinformatics pipelines for sequencing data from long- and short- reads to accurately identify and quantify SARS-CoV-2 variants in wastewater. Dr Viraragavan seeks to expand her scientific expertise in genomic surveillance by producing actionable information on pathogen evolution for public health interventions.