Dr Zhiqiang Zuo

Dr Zhiqiang Zuo is an ARC DECRA Fellow at the Water Research Centre, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UNSW Sydney. He obtained his PhD from Tsinghua University in 2022 and subsequently held multiple prestigious international fellowships supporting continuous postdoctoral research at Beijing University of Technology (China), the University of Queensland (Australia), and King’s College London (UK). In 2025, he was awarded an ARC DECRA Fellowship and joined UNSW. Dr Zuo’s research advances innovative environmental technologies for sustainable urban water management, with impact across the full wastewater system, from sewer process optimisation to resource recovery. His work has delivered mechanistic and practical solutions to sulfide-induced odour, corrosion, and greenhouse gas emissions in complex sewer networks, through the development of integrated, targeted control frameworks based on coordinated mechanisms of disruption, inactivation, inhibition, and oxidation. In parallel, he is pioneering novel microbially mediated pathways for nitrogen recovery from wastewater, contributing to low-carbon, circular approaches to nutrient management and positioning wastewater infrastructure as a platform for resource recovery rather than waste disposal. He has published more than 40 peer-reviewed journal articles, approximately half of which appear in Water Research and Environmental Science & Technology. In over 50% of these publications, he serves as either first or corresponding author. His doctoral thesis was nominated for the Beijing Excellent Doctoral Thesis Award (<0.5% citywide). He has also served as a Guest Editor for Frontiers in Microbiology and Processes