Zhaolu Feng, Wageningen University

Zhaolu Feng, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher at Wageningen University (WUR) in the Netherlands. She obtained her master’s degree from Tsinghua University and completed her PhD in the Department of Environmental Engineering at WUR in January 2026 under the joint supervision of Prof. Nora Sutton (WUR), Prof. Heike Schmitt (TU Delft), and Prof. Mark van Loosdrecht (TU Delft). Her research focuses on the fate and removal of emerging contaminants in municipal wastewater and their potential ecological risks during treated wastewater reuse. During her PhD, she investigated the fate and removal of micropollutants and antibiotic resistance in aerobic granular sludge systems. Her current postdoctoral research focuses on the uptake, translocation, and transformation of micropollutants in constructed wetland plants, as well as their potential ecological risks during treated wastewater reuse. She has published multiple papers in leading journals, including Environmental Science & Technology and Water Research.

Jiao Meng, Ph.D., is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Poitiers, France. He received his Ph.D. degree in Environmental Engineering from the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences (RCEES), Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2024. His research mainly focuses on environmental pollution control and water treatment technologies, with particular interests in the environmental behavior, analytical characterization, and treatment of emerging contaminants, especially per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). His research also covers advanced oxidation processes, including electrochemical oxidation technologies, for the efficient removal and transformation of persistent pollutants. He has participated in multiple projects supported by the international collaborations. His research outcomes have been published in leading environmental journals, including Water Research. 

Tianlong Jia received his B.Eng., M.Eng., and Ph.D. degrees from Harbin Engineering University (2017), Huazhong University of Science and Technology (2020), and Delft University of Technology (2025), respectively. He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany. His research focuses on the application of artificial intelligence to water resources management and environmental monitoring, particularly in flood forecasting, non-point source water pollution prediction, and riverine floating litter monitoring. He has led several research projects, including an open research fund from a State Key Laboratory in China. He has participated in projects, including a project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR). His research has been recognized with several awards, including the Lamminga Fund Award (the Netherlands) and the Best Poster Award at Hydrology Day 2026 (Germany). Dr. Jia has published 15 journal papers, including publications in Water Research, and has been invited to deliver talks at several international conferences. He serves as a Young Editorial Board Member of Energy & Environment Nexus, a Guest Editor for a special issue of Remote Sensing, and a reviewer for leading journals such as Water Research.

Jian Wang is a CSC-funded PhD researcher in Engineering at the University of Exeter. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Hefei University of Technology. His research focuses on intelligent modelling, state estimation and operational optimisation of urban water systems. By integrating deep learning, graph neural networks and large language model agents, he investigates pressure estimation and operational optimisation in water distribution networks, automated calibration of urban drainage models, and decision support for water utilities. He has published in journals including Water Research and the Journal of Environmental Management, and has delivered oral presentations at international conferences such as CCWI.

Hongyu Wang is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Chemistry of Poitiers (IC2MP, UMR 7285 CNRS), University of Poitiers, France. He is currently working on the European research project MARSURE (Hybrid Managed Aquifer Recharge as an Adaptation Tool to Ensure a Resilient and Healthy Groundwater Resource), which aims to develop sustainable groundwater management strategies under climate change. His research focuses on the pretreatment of secondary-treated wastewater prior to its application in Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) systems. Through laboratory-scale experiments, he investigates water quality improvement and the transformation and removal of dissolved organic matter and micropollutants during infiltration. His work contributes to the development of safe, sustainable, and climate-resilient water reuse and groundwater recharge strategies.

Yan Jiang is an Associate Professor at Atlantic Technological University (ATU), Ireland, and was selected as a young overseas high-level talent under a national-level talent programme in China. Her research focuses on greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring, quantification, and mitigation in organic waste and sewage sludge treatment, integrated with machine learning, life cycle assessment, and techno-economic analysis to support low-carbon treatment strategies. She has published more than 20 peer-reviewed papers in leading international journals and holds two granted invention patents. From 2021 to 2024, she worked as a Senior Engineer at Stantec and a Senior Consultant at Irish Water. She was also awarded the Chartered Engineer title with Engineers Ireland. During this period, she led Ireland’s wastewater sludge treatment strategic plan for the next 25 years and the planning of several major sludge hub centres in Scotland and Ireland, providing important support for the EU’s 2050 climate-neutrality target. She completed her PhD under the supervision of Professor Xinmin Zhan, a member of the Irish Academy of Engineering. She was awarded the Outstanding Self-financed Students Abroad from the China Scholarship Council and was received by former President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins.

Xiaoyu Tan holds a PhD in Bioscience Engineering and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven, Belgium. His research focuses on next-generation high-performance separation membranes and their applications in the energy and environmental sectors. He received his bachelor’s degree in Applied Chemistry from Dalian University of Technology, his master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from KAUST, and his PhD from KU Leuven. He also has industrial R&D experience with SABIC and Saudi Aramco. His research has been published in leading journals, including Science, Advanced Materials, Angewandte Chemie, and Advanced Functional Materials. He has received several honors and competitive fellowships, including the Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad, the Young Academics Award, the Best Paper Award, the PhD Student Award of the European Membrane Society, KU Leuven’s Research Council PDM Fellowship, and an FWO postdoctoral fellowship.

Xingzhen Liu, Ph.D. in Biological Engineering, currently holds a postdoctoral position at the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Belgium. Obtained bachelor’s (China Agricultural University – Facility Agricultural Engineering), master’s (Ocean University of China – Marine Fisheries Technology and Internet of Things Engineering), and doctoral (Ghent University – Aquatic Ecosystem Remote Sensing Monitoring) degrees in 2014, 2020, and 2025, respectively. The current research directions mainly include computer vision, artificial intelligence for environmental applications, multi-scale remote sensing, unmanned systems, and the development and application of integrated multi-sensor technologies. He has led and participated as a key contributor in projects funded by Horizon Europe, the Special Research Fund (BOF) of Ghent University, and other programs. He has published multiple papers in journals such as Ecological Informatics and Remote Sensing.

Dr. Hele Guo is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemistry at KU Leuven, Belgium. He received his/her M.S. degree in Materials Science from Donghua University in 2020 and his/her Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from KU Leuven in 2025. His/Her research primarily focuses on the multi-scale structural design of nano high-entropy materials and their applications in electrocatalytic nitrogen cycling. He has published 12 papers as the first or corresponding author in prestigious international journals, including Nature Synthesis, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Advanced Materials.

Yi Wu is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Alibaba-NTU Global e-Sustainability CorpLab, Nanyang Technological University. He holds a Ph.D. in Climate Change and Sustainability from University College London (The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, 2025), an M.S. from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2020), and a B.A. from Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (2017). His research focuses on green finance, corporate sustainability disclosures, the environmental impacts of AI infrastructure, and energy-climate policy. He has contributed to policy and research projects supported by the Asian Development Bank, the MEE of China, and State Grid, and has published over 20 papers in leading journals and venues including Nature Energy, Cell Reports Sustainability, npj Urban Sustainability, ACL, and ACM.

Dr. Hui Yao is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research—UFZ, Germany. He received his Doctor of Science (Technology) in Environmental Technology from Tampere University, Finland, in 2025. His research focuses on environmental microbiology and anaerobic biotechnology, with particular emphasis on microbial electrosynthesis, chain elongation, mixed culture fermentation, and carbon resource recovery. By integrating bioelectrochemical reactor design and operation, anaerobic microbial community engineering, multiomics analysis, and fermentation product characterization, he investigates how pH, electron donors, and operating conditions govern carbon flux partitioning and medium chain carboxylate production, with the aim of converting CO2 and organic waste streams into valuable chemicals. His work has been published in Bioresource Technology, Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology. His research has received personal funding from the Finnish Cultural Foundation. 

Yan Zhang received her PhD in Ecology from the University of Göttingen in 2026, Germany, and is currently a postdoctoral researcher. Her research focuses on forest disturbance ecology, with particular interests in food-web structure, trophic niches, energy fluxes, biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships, and ecosystem processes. Her research has been published in journals such as Functional Ecology, Geoderma, and Forest Ecology and Management. 

Heran Zheng is an Associate Professor at the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London (UCL), and Co-Director of the Infrastructure Investment and Finance (IIF) course. He is a member of the Clean Energy and Low-Carbon Transition Expert Group at the Bartlett, UCL. His main research interests include the construction of global supply-chain databases, sustainable production and consumption, and sustainable infrastructure transitions. He has published more than 90 papers in leading journals such as Nature Climate Change, Nature Cities, Nature Sustainability, PNAS, and Global Environmental Change, with an H-index of 40. He serves as a reviewer for journals including Nature, Nature Climate Change, and Nature Sustainability. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (UK), Co-Chair of the EEIO section of the International Society for Industrial Ecology, and a member of the OECD Expert Advisory Group for the Input-Output Methodology Manual. He also serves as an energy economics expert for the Asian Development Bank and as a visiting project researcher at the University of International Business and Economics. He is listed in the world’s top 2% most-cited scientists and received the Environmental Research Letters Top Cited Paper Award. He is an editor for Communications in Earth and Environment, Energy and Climate Management, and Carbon Footprint.

Anna Huang holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences and is currently a researcher at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands. She obtained her PhD from Wageningen University in 2022. Her research focuses on the ecological risk assessment of pesticides and other environmental contaminants. This includes toxicity testing in aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates, the mechanisms and prediction of toxic effects, and the monitoring and transport of contaminants in the environment. She has participated in multiple international collaborative research projects.

Qiyun Zhang is a postdoctoral researcher at the Environmental Toxicology Laboratory (GhEnToxLab), Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Belgium. Her research focuses on environmental toxicology and ecological risk assessment, with particular emphasis on the environmental fate, bioavailability, and ecological risks of emerging contaminants such as antibiotics. She is dedicated to developing more scientifically robust and ecologically relevant approaches for environmental risk assessment, providing a theoretical basis for chemical management and sustainable development. She has participated in several international collaborative research projects and has published multiple peer-reviewed articles in journals including Environmental Pollution.

Xuchao Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate in Ecology at the Institute of Biology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. He expects to complete his Ph.D. degree in October 2026. His research mainly focuses on soil ecology and ecotoxicology, particularly the effects of microplastic pollution on soil nematodes, microbial communities, soil carbon cycling, food-web structure, and energy flux. His research methods include nematode extraction and identification and food-web modelling. He has conducted collaborative research at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History Görlitz, and the Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Bijing Xiong is currently a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zürich. She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 2022 from the University of Leipzig / Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Germany. Her research focuses on microscale microbial ecology and function. By integrating high-throughput droplet microfluidics and precision microbial community printing, she aims to elucidate the regulatory mechanisms of microbial spatial assembly and micro-interface interactions on community functions and environmental responses. Her research findings have been published in leading international journals, including Science Advances, mBio, Journal of Hazardous Materials, and Small Methods. Her work has been supported by major competitive grants and fellowships, including a BRIDGE Discovery grant (3M CHF), an ETH Fellowship (231k CHF), and a DAAD grant (€20k).