Wen Zhang

Wen Zhang is currently an associate professor of NJIT’s Newark College of Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering with a second appointment in the Department of Chemical and Material Engineering. Wen is a licensed Professional Engineer (P.E.) registered in the States of New Jersey and Delaware. He is an American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists (AAEES) Board Certified Environmental Engineer (BCEE). Wen received his B.S from Tsinghua University, M.S. from Tongji University, and Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology. His PhD work focused on the environmental fate and transport of engineered nanoparticles, biological interactions, as well as nanomaterial characterization at biointerfaces. After joining NJIT, he has been leading major efforts in the visible light-driven photocatalytic processes for harnessing solar energy, hydrogen evolution, and efficient degradation of emerging water contaminants. His expertise includes environmental behavior and interfacial processes for nanomaterials, microplastics and soft particles such as microbes and bubbles, reactive membrane filtration systems for desalination and emerging contaminant removal, photocatalysis for pollutant degradation and solar conversion into hydrogen, and microalgal removal and harvesting processing using magnetophoretic separation and membrane filtration processes. His current research also expands from agricultural applications of nanobubbles to lithium recovery from spent lithium ion batteries. More details are available at Zhang’s website: www.wenresearch.com.

So far, Wen has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles in high impact journals such as ES&T, Journal of Physical Chemistry, Small, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces，Applied Catalysis B: Environmental. His works garners over 5000 citations with an H index of 35. He has secured more than $3 million competitive research funding from various sources such as NSF, EPA, USDA, DOI and industries. Prof. Zhang has filled or received 6 US and China patents with two undergoing commercialization. Wen is the recipient of a number of prestigious national awards in the US, including the 2011 Simon Karecki Award from the Global Research Collaboration and SEMATECH Engineering Research Center for Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing, the 2012 CH2M Hill/AEESP Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP), the 2013 CIBA/ACS Younger Chemists Committee (YCC) Young Scientist Travel Award, the 2014 ExCEEd Teaching Fellows by American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and the 2016 ASCE New Jersey Section's Educator of the Year.