Angelica Rada was born in Santa Marta, Colombia. She is a Civil Engineer (2008) form the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Bogota). She worked as civil engineer in Colombia in different projects during 2008 and 2010 in the area of hydraulics and environmental technology. In 2012, she successfully completed her MSc. studies on sanitary engineering and municipal water and infrastructure. Angélica enrolled as PhD fellow between 2013 - 2018 in the Environmental Engineering & Water Technology department at UNESCO - IHE, Delft, and Wageningen University. Her PhD research focused on the treatment of ammonium rich wastewater using microalgal-bacterial consortia. Over the past nine years, she has worked with a team of experts on wastewater treatment, environmental technologies, sanitation techniques and civil engineering activities in Colombia and The Netherlands inside and outside academia. This has helped her to develop different abilities on a technical and personal level as a civil and sanitary engineering working in the field of environmental biotechnology.

• 1 General introduction 2 Microalgal-bacterial consortia for wastewater treatment a review 3 Nitrification by microalgal-bacterial consortia for ammonium removal in a flat panel sequencing photobioreactor 4 Ammonium removal mechanisms in a microalgal-bacterial sequencing-batch photobioreactor at different SRT 5 Modelling of nitrogen removal using a microalgal-bacterial consortium 6 Modelling of nitrogen removal using a microalgal-bacterial consortium under different SRTs 7 Respirometric tests for microalgal-bacterial biomass: modelling of nitrogen storage by microalgae 8 Conclusions and recommendations