March 17th 2021. Prof. Xiong gave an invited talk at a one day workshop held by CellPress lablinks on Circular plastics economy – linking across scales, with a title "The knowns and unknowns of plastic degradation in the natural environment”. This LabLinks provide a platform for world-leading experts in chemistry, materials science, engineering, industrial ecology, and environmental science to share recent insights and discuss cross-disciplinary opportunities for tackling plastic pollution across scales.
January 18th 2021. Prof. Xiong's first corresponding author article in collaboration with Prof. Ning Dai is accepted into Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology. We investigated the less explored peracetic acid oxidation chemistry in aromatic polyamide nanofiltration membrane and its impact on membrane performance for water reuse applications.
December 12th 2020. Prof. Xiong gave an invited POLYMSE seminar on "Environmental fate of polymers: an example of polyacrylamide and an outlook for plastics” held by graduate students and postdocs at the UMN Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science.
December 7th 2020. We are awarded with the MnDrive Seed Grant and a travel grant supported by NRRI! We have an open postdoc position to work on novel approach to valorizing plastic waste! Advertisement for this position can be seen here.
October 16th 2020. Prof. Xiong gave an invited talk on sustainable water purification at the Saint Francis University, invited by graduate school collaborator and friend Travis Tasker!
October 13th 2020. Prof. Xiong gave an invited talk on strategies for enabling plastic circularity and elimination of end-of-life plastic waste at the 2nd Global Symposium on Waste Plastic held by AlchE.
September 19th 2020. Prof. Xiong co-authored a paper developing a novel vulnerability hydrology model to predict rural areas that are more likely to suffer from groundwater contamination by hydraulic fracturing activities in Northeastern Pennsylvania. This is the first paper of our collaborative EPA project between Yale and MIT. A lot more to come!
September 17th 2020. Prof. Xiong gave an invited lecture on peptide enabled filtration at the WESTalks series, The India-Canada Centre for Innovative Multidisciplinary Partnerships to Accelerate Community Transformation and Sustainability.
August 31st 2020. Xiong Research Lab at UMN is officially open! Welcome Phoebe Keyes (Ph.D.), Daizong Meng (Ph.D.), Sara BA (Postdoc), and Claire Alberg (MS) joining the group! Check out their individual profile here. We also inherit a lab-scale crossflow RO system, a MFP3D-Bio atomic force microscope, and an Anton Paar SurPASS electrokinetic analyzer.
August 13th 2020. Our Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR) proposal "Evaluating Coronavirus And Other Microbiological Contamination Of Drinking Water from Wastewater" in collaboration with Profs. Timothy LaPara and Raymond Hozalski is highly recommended for funding!
August 5th 2020. Prof. Xiong introduced our seed project on assessing environmental degradability of plastics at the NSF Center for Sustainable Polymer Seed Grant Recipient Meeting.
July 22nd 2020. First co-authored Nature paper! Prof. Xiong as a postdoc at MIT teamed up with the Johnson Group in MIT Chemistry to show that ultra strong novel thermoset plastics could be degraded under both natural seawater conditions and industrial recycling schemes. This work provides a sustainable option for the least recyclable plastic!
June 22nd 2020. Prof. Xiong gave an invited lecture at the 57th Annual Meeting of the Center for Filtration Research, University of Minnesota.
May 30th 2020. During her last two months of postdoc time at MIT, Prof. Xiong was awarded as CEE Postdoctoral Scholar Mentoring, Teaching, and Excellence Award. In total 7 undergraduate students, 1 high schooler, and 2 graduate students were mentored by Prof. Xiong during the two year postdoc time at MIT. It is quite an honor to be awarded to perform basic responsibility of an academic!
May 18-20th 2020. Prof. Xiong co-chaired the online poster session and poster competition of the online annual meeting of North American Membrane Society 2020. It was a first time ever such format was adopted by annual conference of the membrane community and quite an experiment of the novel online platform. Hope over 600 attendees and near 200 students enjoyed the interaction at the conference!
- The knowns and unknowns of plastic degradation in the natural environment”.