• Founding Director, Chinese National Engineering Research Center for Control and Treatment of Heavy Metal Pollution (Hong Kong Branch)
  • Chair Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering & Division of Environment and Sustainability, HKUST
  • Associate Director, Institute for the Environment, HKUST
  • Director, Water Technology Center, HKUST
  • Mentor, IHE Delft's Global Sanitation Graduate School
  • Member, International Water Association Strategic Council

Professor Guanghao CHEN was born in Jiaxing Haiyan of Zhejiang Province, China in 1960 and his ancestral home was Ninbo Zhenhai of Zhejiang Province. He acquired the national overseas study candidacy in 1982, was admitted to the graduate study program of Kyoto University, Japan in 1983, and obtained Master’s and PhD degrees in Engineering in 1986 and 1990. Currently, he serves as the founding director of the Hong Kong Branch of the Chinese National Engineering Research Center of Heavy Metal Pollution Control and Treatment, Chair Professor of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Division of Environment and Sustainability, Associate Director of the Institute for the Environment, and the Director of Water Technology Center, The Hong Kong University of Science & Technology. He serves as a mentor of IHE Delft (formerly UNESCO IHE)’s Global Sanitation Graduate School (GSGS), a member of the International Water Association (IWA, London, the largest water professional network in the world) Strategic Council, an editor of Water Research (a world top research journal in the water field). He was elected a Fellow and Distinguished Fellow of IWA in 2011 and 2016. He and his team received 10 national and international awards, including the inaugural China National Innovation Pioneer Award (首届全国创新争先奖状，2017，北京) and the IWA Project Innovation Bronze Prize in Breakthrough Research 2018, and the Hong Kong Green Innovations Gold Award 2018; in 2020, he was invited by IWA Publisher as the lead editor to publish IWA publisher’s the bestseller “Biological Wastewater Treatment-Principles, Modelling, and Design”s 2nd edition, which is being translated to Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese and, etc. This book was also awarded the Best Scientific Book Award of IWA in 2022. His main original and breakthrough work includes breakthrough R&D in the development of novel biological wastewater treatment processes, e.g. SANI, SOSA, and LEEO processes), electrochemical treatment of highly concentrated landfill leachate (ECO technology), and the development of future treatment processes for energy-minimal and resource recovery-maximal wastewater treatment processes.