Background
With the rapid development of economy and continuous improvement of people's living standards, excessive dependence on resources and huge consumption of energy for economic growth have caused environmental pollution which is getting increasingly serious. The Chinese government attaches great importance to environmental and health problems. The outline of the "Healthy China 2030 Plan" issued in 2016 proposes to strengthen the management of environmental problems that affect health, improve the prevention of air, water and soil pollution, and establish sound mechanisms for the monitoring, survey and risk assessment of environment and health. Societal needs and national strategic deployment pose great challenges as well as development opportunities for environmental health science research.
China Jiliang University (CJLU) introduced Prof. Guo Liang Hong, a scientist from the Research Center for Eco-environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences and established a research team focusing on environmental health science. By recruiting young researchers from top research institutions and incorporating faculty members within CJLU, the team has expanded and evolved to an interdisciplinary research institute - "Research Institute of Environmental and Health Sciences" with the goal of becoming a top research institute in China.
Our Vision
Aiming at the research fronts of the environmental and health sciences and major problems of environmental pollution and health problems in China, we strive to develop a full set of integrated teaching courses and research directions in environmental and health sciences by incorporating relevant featured disciplines at CJLU. We strive to build an international team, led by top scientists and comprised of outstanding young researchers and highly motivated students. We endeavor to establish an advanced platform for environmental health research, including high-resolution chemical analysis, precision toxicology, and high-throughput toxicity testing by making full use of the financial support from the central government ministries, Zhejiang provincial government and other government departments. We will strengthen collaboration with other colleges of CJLU and prominent institutions in China, and jointly promote rapid development of the environmental health discipline in China. We strive to exploit our competitive advantages to strengthen our collaboration with top universities and institutions worldwide so as to get integrated into the mainstream and eventually achieve a leapfrog development in the discipline of environmental health science.
Main Research Directions
The research institute focuses on the major environmental health problems of persistent toxic pollutants and emerging contaminants in the Yangtze River Delta region. We investigate all the processes contributing to environmental health problems, including pollution emission, environmental process, human exposure, toxicology, risk assessment, pollution control.The main research directions are as follows:
1. Environmental Analytical Chemistry and Human Exposure Measurements
Efficient pretreatment methods for environmental, food and biological samples; high sensitivity, high resolution chromatography-mass spectrometry analytical methods; non-targeted analysis; rapid biosensing detection methods.
2. Toxico-genomics and Molecular Toxicology
Metabolic kinetics and biologically effective dose of pollutants; bio-informatics analysis of genomics, metabolomics, and proteomics; molecular initiating events, key biological adverse outcome pathways and biomarkers of early effects of chemical toxicants.
3. Health Risk Assessment and Prevention
Human exposure routes of highly toxic environmental contaminants, screening and identification of high-risk environmental contaminants, technologies for emission control, environmental remediation, and prevention of human exposure.
