Dr Yao Lu received his B.Sc. degree in Chemistry from Sun Yat-sen University and his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from Tsinghua University in 2017. He then worked as a Professional Engineer at China Everbright Environment Group Limited, contributing to environmental technology development in waste treatment and resource recovery, as well as government–enterprise strategic environmental planning. From 2019 to 2021, he conducted postdoctoral research in Environmental Engineering at the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, Tsinghua University, focusing on emerging contaminants, their formation mechanisms, and toxicological implications during water treatment. Before being appointed as a Research Assistant Professor, Dr Lu had worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Fellow at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of PolyU for nearly five years. With a multidisciplinary background in organic and analytical chemistry, environmental engineering and toxicology, Dr Lu develops AI-assisted approaches that integrate nontargeted chemical analysis, interpretable machine learning and large language models, and cell-based experimental validation to identify and prioritize emerging contaminants. His current research focuses on the AI-enabled characterization and health-risk assessment of emerging contaminants in atmospheric and aquatic environments, with particular emphasis on identifying toxicity-driving organic compounds in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and translating predictive models into web-based tools for environmental health applications.
Dr Lu has reported on 1 September 2026.
