Dr. Wenqing Xu serves as the director of the Center for Human-Environmental Systems (CHES) in the college of engineering. The central focus of her research program is to address critical urban water challenges—from protecting drinking water supplies against wildfire-derived contaminants to enabling stormwater reuse as a sustainable water source through innovative treatment technologies for emerging contaminant removal—while fostering interdisciplinary collaborations that bridge fundamental research with practical solutions for water-scarce communities. Her research program builds on aquatic chemistry, analytical chemistry, and material engineering, which extends to address key challenges in three main areas: (1) novel approaches to control emerging contaminants, (2) environmental monitoring and sensing, and (3) toxicity studies to understand the toxicity drivers in engineering processes. Dr. Xu has served as a principal and co-principal investigator of projects funded by SERDP, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Environmental Protection Agency on research involving the development of reactive adsorbents for pollutant abatement, such as chlorinated solvents, pesticides, munitions constituents, PFAS and disinfection byproducts. She is a recipient of various awards, including the NSF CAREER award (2018) and the University Scholarly Achievement Award (2020). She is active in several professional engineering associations and serves as the associate editor of the journal Environmental Engineering (ASCE). She received her doctoral degree in chemical and environmental engineering from Yale University in 2014..

Ph.D. (Chemical and Environmental Engineering) Yale University, 2014

M.S.E. (Geography and Environmental Engineering) Johns Hopkins University, 2009

B.E. (Environmental Engineering) Nankai University, China, 2007