Micro/Nanoplastic Detection Technologies: Where Are the Technical Bottlenecks?

Dr. Wang focused on the environmental behaviors and ecological effects of microplastics. The effects of microplastics on soil microbial ecosystems and dynamics of soil carbon were studies. The microbial communities on microplastics (plastisphere) were characterized, including the composition, co-occurrence interactions, and the assembly processes. The vector effects of microplastics on hydrophobic organic contaminants were also studied. Dr. Wang has published more than 40 papers in these five years, including Advanced Science, Global Change Biology, Environmental Science & Technology, and Water Research. The citation has been approximately 6000, and the H-index has been 37. Dr. Wang has been appointed as a Youth Committee Member of the Environmental Microplastics Working Group, Chinese Society of Soil Science.

Dr. An is an adjunct faculty member at the College of Water Sciences, Beijing Normal University, and a research professor at the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences. He has long been engaged in scientific research in the fields of environmental behavior and risk assessment of microplastics, as well as aquatic toxicology and risk evaluation. He received his Ph.D. in Environmental Science from the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2006. He also conducted visiting research at North Carolina State University (August 2013 – August 2014) and at the Cawthron Institute in New Zealand (December 2022 – March 2023).
Dr. An has led projects supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Key R&D Program. He has published numerous academic papers on the environmental behavior and biological toxicological effects of microplastics, and authored books including Microplastics in Water and Wastewater. He has also played an active role in organizing national academic conferences.

Dr. Zhang graduated from Nankai University in 2020 with a Ph.D. in Science. From 2018 to 2019, he was jointly trained at the Wadsworth Center of the New York State Department of Health in the United States. He has conducted postdoctoral research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the University of Copenhagen. His main research direction is the development of analytical methods for new organic pollutants, the study of their environmental behavior, and the assessment of human exposure risks. Dr. Zhang pioneered the chemical depolymerization-liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry method for analyzing polyethylene terephthalate and polycarbonate microplastics in the environment. Based on this method, he revealed the environmental distribution and human exposure of these two types of microplastics. Currently, he has published over 40 papers in top environmental journals such as Environmental Science & Technology and Environmental Science & Technology Letters. Three of his papers have been selected as ESI highly cited papers, and two have been featured as cover papers of the journals.