‘Effective Sewage Surveillance Systems to Track the Transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 Virus’
Professor Tong Zhang of the Department of Civil Engineering received the HKU Innovator Award for his exemplary achievements and the exemplary impact of his research work.
Microbiome is closely linked to human health and environment protection. Professor Zhang and his team have been working on environmental microbiome and wastewater-based epidemiology for the past fifteen years. They invented quantitative assays using metagenomics and bioinformatics for those important microorganisms in wastewater treatment and environmental protection to improve the pollution control performance of the engineering facilities, and developed comprehensive analytical methods for the emerging biological pollutants (antibiotics resistance genes) as a worldwide leading group in the field of environmental dimension of antibiotics resistance. Recently, Professor Zhang and his team designed the effective sewage surveillance systems to track the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its variants in the community and find the hidden cases in a population, significantly contributing to the fight against the pandemic.
Professor Tong Zhang, Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering