Tarja Pitkänen’s group research interests focuses on environmental health and environmental microbiology. Specifically, the group expertise covers water microbiology in terms how waterborne microbes might affect health of humans and animals. This entails microbes and methods used for water quality monitoring and fecal source tracking, and pathogens causing waterborne and zoonotic infections. The research group leader Tarja Pitkänen is co-affiliated with the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, THL, a governmental research institute in Finland.