Dr. Tang is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP). He is housed in Department of Chemistry and is one of two faculty members who run the baccalaureate Environmental Engineering Program. His research interests include: (1) Physicochemical processes with emphases on water desalination and disinfection byproducts control in the areas of environmental aquatic chemistry and water quality; (2) Innovative applications of sustainable environmental processes to address challenging issues (produced water, acid mine drainage, swimming pool water, rainfall and runoff) for public health protection and industry stewardship; and (3) Aquarium water engineering for minimization of water footprints and environmental concerns of aquaculture.
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He received his B.S. in Water & Wastewater Engineering from Hunan University in 2004 at age 19. After that, he pursued higher education at Penn State – University Park and obtained his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering in 2011 at age 26. He visited Prof. David Reckhow’s lab at UMass Amherst for a short period of time thereafter and then continued his research as a postdoc at Penn State Harrisburg in Prof. Yuefeng Xie’s lab for one additional year after obtaining his PhD.
His industry experience started from 2012 when he accepted a job offer as a Process Engineer from an environmental company in Minnesota, where he practiced engineering designs on 50+ packaged water and wastewater treatment plants. He was certified as a Professional Engineer during this period. In the meanwhile, he brought his practical engineering design experience to academia in spare time by working as an Adjunct Professor at Hunan University.
As a result of an enjoyable undergraduate advising experience gained from teaching at Hunan, he decided to fully return to academia from industry and started his current position at IUP since 2016. Based in an undergraduate institution with a “4+4” teaching load, he combines research into teaching to increase students interest in STEM. So far he has mentored 8 undergraduates to publish in peer-reviewed journals.
He actively seeks funding to secure operations of his lab at IUP. He was awarded several IUP grants and a small grant from industry. He kept writing NSF proposals to the programs of CBET, INFEWS, and CAREER. Other endeavors include writing research proposals submitted to DOI, PA-DEP, and PA-WRRC.
Publishing is a well established tradition in his lab. In 18/19 school year, he published 10 peer reviewed publications and was recognized for 2018 Scholarship Achievement by the IUP President’s Office.
He serves as the Scholarship Committee Chair of Water Works Operators’ Association of Pennsylvania (WWOAP) since 2018. He has been invited as a ad-hoc reviewer for 20+ journals indexed by Web of Science. He was the founding webmaster of Chinese-American Professors in Environmental Engineering and Science (CAPEES, 2007 – 2017), and now maintains the baccalaureate Environmental Engineering Program pages at IUP.