Dr Yu Zhang

Dr Yu Zhang is a Professor, and currently serves as vice director of State Key Laboratory of Environmental Aquatic Chemistry, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences (RCEES), Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since joining RCEES in 1998, she has gained significant research progress in water pollution control and reclamation. She currently focuses on the following research topics: antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in environment (pollution characteristics, transformation mechanism, and control principle), treatment and reclamation technologies for wastewater and wastes. She received a State Natural Science Award and a State Scientific and Technological Progress Award in 2017 and 2006, respectively, from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China.

In respect to the environmental pollution characteristics, transmission mechanism of antibiotics and ARGs, her group unearthed the biological treatment system of antibiotic production wastewater with high antibiotic residues, which is one of the hotspots for the development of antibiotic resistance. Importantly, her group also unveiled an important mechanism through which the increase of mobile genetic elements under high antibiotic stresses gives rise to the high occurrence of multi-drug resistant bacteria. Based on the above findings, enhanced hydrolysis and hydrothermal pretreatment for the reduction of antibiotic in manufacturing wastewater and wastes were developed to block the dissemination of ARGs, which have been successfully applied in full-scale plants in China. In this premise, she becomes an invited expert of the pharmaceutical industry in China on the pollution control.

She was invited to attend two workshops on “Developing priorities for WHO activities on Anti-microbial Resistance and the Environment” and “Antibiotic Use and Wastewater Residue” organized by WHO in 2017 and 2019, respectively. She has joined the panel as one of the leading authors in WHO Technical Brief on Water, sanitation and hygiene and wastewater management to prevent infections and reduce the spread of antimicrobial resistance (2020).