March 25, 2021
Dr. Baiyu Zhang PhD’06, a graduate of the University of Regina, is an award-winning professor and researcher on the technologies for pollution control and waste management in marine and coastal environments. Zhang has spent over two decades studying the transport and fate of oil and emerging contaminants, marine oil spill response, coastal/inland site remediation, coastal wastewater treatment, offshore reservoir souring control, and fishery/municipal solid waste management. Dr. Zhang founded the Coastal Environment Laboratory and is a key researcher of the Northern Region Persistent Organic Pollution Control Laboratory at Memorial University. She has led or co-led over 30 research grants and contracts, with a total amount of more than 9 million CAD from federal, provincial and international agencies and companies. She has co-authored nearly 300 publications with over 90 peer-reviewed journal articles.
Baiyu began her doctoral studies at the University of Regina in 2001. A student of Dr. Gordon Huang, Executive Director of the Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainable Communities and Professor, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, her thesis research focused on the development of biological techniques for the remediation of petroleum contaminated sites.
In 2010, Baiyu began her academic career in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at Memorial University of Newfoundland as Assistant Professor. She was awarded an early promotion with tenure to Associate Professor in five years. In 2017 she was awarded the Canada Research Chair in Coastal Environmental Engineering (Tier 2). Later she was promoted to full Professor in 2020. Dr. Zhang is currently also an adjunct research scientist in the IEESC at the University of Regina and is a registered professional engineer in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Reflecting on her time at the University of Regina Dr. Zhang explains that those positive experiences inspired her to pursue an academic career after graduation. She was encouraged by her PhD supervisor to push through barriers and take advantage of opportunities such as apply for scholarships and attend seminars to improve herself. “The U of R creates an encouraging and warm working/living environment…and it provided me with many opportunities to train my teaching and research skills and help me to establish leadership” in her chosen field of environmental engineering. The lessons learned at the U of R remain with her as she trains the next generation of highly qualified personnel and they help guide her research pursuits.