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Professional Experience

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Mar 2026 - Present

Education

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering, Aug 2022 - Jan 2026

  • Supervisor: Associate Professor Fei Xunchang
  • Advisory Committee: Professor Lim Teik Thye and Professor Grzegorz Lisak
  • Thesis: The biogeochemical dynamics of major elements in municipal solid waste landfills

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, M.Eng. in Environmental Engineering, Aug 2020 - May 2022

  • Supervisor: Associate Professor Fei Xunchang
  • Thesis: The degradation processes of municipal solid waste in landfills

Tongji University, B.S. in Environmental Science, Sep 2016 - Jul 2020

  • Supervisors: Professor Daqiang Yin and Professor Hongtao Wang
  • Thesis: QSAR modeling of chlorinated paraffin in aquatic ecosystems

Research Interests

My research addresses sustainable solid waste management in a changing Earth system. I study the two-way interactions between waste systems and global change and turn the findings into engineering and management solutions, aiming to make waste systems measurable, predictable, and manageable.

Measuring global impacts of waste facilities. By cross-checking IPCC-based bottom-up inventories against top-down atmospheric estimates, I revealed systematic underestimation of landfill methane, especially in data-scarce countries and at informal and legacy dumpsites. I combine machine learning, satellite remote sensing, and field data to map waste facilities and build local-to-global inventories toward a global measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) framework.

Understanding coupled waste processes under global change. I identify climate-sensitive controls on waste decay, such as composition, moisture, and temperature (CMT), and translate them into site-specific models, including the CMT method for landfill methane adopted by Climate TRACE. I investigate how global change, such as warming, extreme rainfall, sea-level rise, and shifting waste composition, alters coupled biological, chemical, and physical waste processes, and develop physics-informed process models to predict gas and contaminant fluxes.

Engineering low-carbon, climate-resilient waste systems. I combined revised emission estimates and exposure risks to develop low-cost, local mitigation strategies, from food waste reduction and waste-to-energy to landfill gas capture, and co-developed WasteMAP with RMI. I aim to design and field-verify lasting interventions, such as adaptive gas collection, biocovers, and aeration for closed landfills, carbonation of incineration ash, and climate-resilient closure designs.

Tracing the long-term fate of plastics and microplastics. I study how land-disposed plastics age, fragment into microplastics, and are released to the environment, drawing on ten-year landfill simulation experiments. I also investigate plastiglomerates, plastic-rock composites that may form in landfills, and how plastics may alter carbon and nitrogen cycling in waste, to inform monitoring, risk assessment, and end-of-life management.

Grants

  • Participant, Climate Resilience and Adaptation of Coastal Dumpsites and Landfills in East and Southeast Asia. A*STAR-Chinese Academy of Sciences Joint Project (R25J3IR075), Feb 2026 - Present; approximately 200,000 USD.
  • Participant, Mechanistic Modeling of Coastal and Riverine Solid Waste Disposal Sites in Southeast Asia and South Asia. Singapore Ministry of Education Tier 1 Project (RG175/25), Feb 2026 - Present; approximately 170,000 USD.
  • Participant, Environmental Standards and Engineering Behaviours of Reused Incineration Ashes from Municipal Solid Waste and Sewage Sludge. Singapore National Environment Agency, Closing the Resource Loop Funding Initiative (CTRL-2025-1D-01), Mar 2025 - Present; approximately 4.8 million USD.
  • Participant, "Breaking the Ground" in Semakau Landfill: Technological Solutions for Site Investigation and Material Reuse. Singapore National Environment Agency, Closing the Resource Loop Funding Initiative (USS-IF-2021-4), Sep 2021 - Sep 2024; approximately 4.7 million USD; completed.
  • Participant, Tackling Microfibres at Source: Investigating Opportunities to Reduce Microfibre Pollution from the Fashion Industry through Textile Design and Manufacturing Innovation. United Nations Development Programme, Aug 2021 - Aug 2023; approximately 45,000 USD; completed.

Research Impact

Policy and Practical Applications

  • Climate TRACE adopted my improved landfill methane estimation method to determine site-specific waste decay rates. Its 2025 solid-waste methodology explicitly applies this approach in facility-level emissions estimation.
  • WasteMAP / RMI: In collaboration with RMI, I contributed to the development of WasteMAP by integrating my improved landfill methane estimation method and mitigation assessment into the platform, and supported data consolidation and landfill identification for city- and facility-level emissions accounting and decision support.
  • OECD, Targeting methane emissions to mitigate the risk of climate overshoot (2025), cited my research to evidence that landfill methane emissions are underestimated and mitigation opportunities are being missed.

Peer Evaluation

  • Örjan Gustafsson (Stockholm University), Jiang Kejun (Energy Research Institute, NDRC, China), and colleagues, in Ten new insights in climate science 2024, One Earth (2025), recognized my contribution to integrating bottom-up and top-down approaches for methane emissions estimation.
  • Daniel J. Jacob (Harvard University) and colleagues, Environmental Research Letters (2025), cited my finding that rainfall alters waste decay rates to explain the satellite-observed surge in methane emissions at a US landfill during an abnormally wet year (2020).
  • Joannes D. Maasakkers (SRON), Daniel J. Varon (MIT), and colleagues, Nature (2025), cited my research to demonstrate that landfill methane model parameters are uncertain and site-specific, supporting the case for independent satellite observations.
  • Tianhai Cheng (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and colleagues, Nature Climate Change (2025), cited my research to support that meteorological variations drive fluctuations in landfill methane emissions, and that improved landfill management offers a cost-effective mitigation pathway.
  • Guanghao Chen (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) and colleagues, Nature Cities (2025), cited my research to establish that landfills generate more than 10% of global anthropogenic methane emissions.
  • Beidou Xi (Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences) and colleagues, Water Research (2026), cited my research to establish the substantial global climate contribution of landfill methane.

Media Coverage

  • NTU Engineering Annual Magazine 2024 featured my landfill methane research as one of five major research achievements in the College of Engineering's Our Discoveries section ("Landfills are Trash for the Atmosphere", pp. 12-14).