CSEE student awarded the 2025 Chinese-American Professors in Environmental Engineering and Science Virtual Student Poster Competition
By Alicia Maxwell
Published September 22, 2025
Chonglin Zhu, a PhD candidate in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, is an award recipient of the Chinese-American Professors of Environmental Engineering and Science (CAPEES) Virtual Student Poster Competition for her research on the prediction of virus resistance to disinfection treatment. The posters were judged on four categories: clarity, novelty, scientific merit and overall impact.
Chonglin Zhu, PhD candidate
According to the association of the official website, “CAPEES has become the first and the largest academic association of Chinese environmental engineering and science scholars in North America.”
“I felt truly honored and excited. CAPEES is a respected community with many outstanding scholars, so receiving this recognition was very meaningful to me. I was also very happy to have the chance to share my work with other colleagues in the field,” said Zhu.
The inspiration for her research came from studying the environmental persistence of viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2, when they are shed from infected individuals. Introducing omics technologies into environmental engineering, she was inspired to use a tool called proteomics to explore the inactivation mechanisms of viruses in our engineered systems.
“Proteomics is the study of all proteins in a system. It looks at which proteins are there, how many of them are present and how they change under different conditions (health, disease, environmental stress), using tools like mass spectrometry,” says Zhu.
Zhu said with the knowledge of virus inactivation, environmental engineers can do a better job of disinfection during future viral outbreaks without overdosing disinfectants on our water systems. Her research was mentored by Yinyin Ye, an assistant professor in the department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering.
Notably, Zhu’s research paper, “Reactivity of Viral Proteins with Free Chlorine: Structural Insights and Implications for Virus Inactivation,” has been featured on the supplementary cover of the 2025 Environmental Science and Technology journal, and she was an honorable mention for graduate students/post-doc poster awards at the 2025 Gordon Research Conference.
“I aspire to continue developing advanced proteomics tools to tackle pressing challenges in environmental health, such as virus disinfection and emerging contaminants,” said Zhu. “In the long term, I hope to lead research that connects molecular science with engineering solutions to ensure safe and sustainable water for communities.”