RESEARCHERS

CHES Director, Wenqing Xu
Associate Professor
Civil and Environmental Engineering

Dr. Wenqing Xu is director of the Center for Human-Environmental Systems (CHES) in the College of Engineering. The central focus of her research program is to better understand the various ways that nature detoxifies contaminants by the integration of chemical, biological, and material sciences approaches to 1) attenuate pollutant transport and thereby protect source water and 2) degrade contaminants with novel materials to provide safe drinking water. Dr. Xu has served as a principal and co-principal investigator of projects funded by SERDP, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Environmental Protection Agency on research involving the development of reactive adsorbents for pollutant abatement, such as chlorinated solvents, pesticides, munitions constituents, PFAS and disinfection byproducts. She is a recipient of various awards, including the NSF CAREER award (2018) and the University Scholarly Achievement Award (2020). She is active in several professional engineering associations and serves as the associate editor of the journal Environmental Engineering (ASCE). She received her PhD in Chemical and Environmental Engineering from Yale University in 2014.
Email: wenqing.xu@villanova.edu
Phone: (610) 519-8549 
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Twitter: @xu_wenqing