EESS talk on "Uncovering Microbial Potential: From Chemical Biotransformation to Resource Recovery"

Biotransformation plays a crucial role in understanding the environmental fate of anthropogenic chemicals in both engineered and natural environments. While efforts have been made to study the contaminants persistence across environmental compartments, identifying the molecular insights of these reactions (e.g., microorganisms and enzymes) remains challenging. In this seminar, I will showcase how my research has progressed from identifying microorganisms responsible for the biotransformation of specific organic contaminants (e.g., PFAS) using cultivation-dependent methods to developing cultivation-independent approaches for broader applications. I will also discuss how these findings contribute to developing early warning systems for wastewater treatment plants and advancing the vision of harnessing microbial potential for simultaneous pollutant removal and waste-to-resource recovery.

Dr. Yu received his B.S. in Hydrology and Water Resources Engineering from Jilin University (2015) and his M.S. (2017) and Ph.D. (2021) in Environmental Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. He was a visiting project scientist at the University of California, Riverside (2019–2021) and later a postdoctoral researcher at Eawag and ETH Zurich (2022–2025). He will join Stanford University as an Assistant Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering in January 2026, with an interim appointment as Acting Assistant Professor. Dr. Yu’s research focuses on chemical–microbe interactions across diverse environments, aiming to understand how microorganisms transform anthropogenic chemicals, how these transformations influence ecosystem functions and human health, and how this knowledge can be leveraged to design innovative bioremediation strategies.