Qilin Wang - Biography#

Qilin is a Professor at School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of Technology Sydney. His research focuses on sustainable wastewater treatment and wastewater-based epidemiology. His latest achievements include the development of a closed-loop technology that expands the capacity of wastewater treatment plants and reduces the discharge of waste and pollutants entering the environment (e.g. antibiotic resistance genes, pathogens). Furthermore, his technology can maximize energy recovery from wastewater to achieve energy-positive and carbon-neutral wastewater treatment.

Qilin pioneered the development of an AI-driven, generalizable model that accurately predicts COVID-19 hospitalizations using wastewater-based epidemiology. This model delivers earlier, more accurate, and highly transferable predictions across diverse regions compared to existing prediction systems. His prediction tool empowers public health authorities to proactively prepare for and manage pandemic surges, particularly in the face of limited healthcare resources.

He has secured >30 grants (mostly as the project leader) from Australian Research Council, Australian State Government, German Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung and Australian Industry since 2015. He has held fellowships from both Australia and Germany and is an elected Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry, Engineers Australia, and Royal Society of NSW.

He has not only published in specialised journals such as Water Research, but also in multidisciplinary journals such as Nature Communications and Science (letter) as the corresponding author. His Nature Communications paper receives an Altmetric attention score of up to 715, placing it in the Top 1% of the Nature Communications articles. He has received many national and international awards.

His work has been reported in >160 news outlets including ABC News, SBS, Engineers Australia, EurekAlert!, ScienceDaily, The Engineer, and US TV affiliates Fox, ABC, CBS and NBC.