Rate My Professor Xing Yang

Xing Yang is a Professor of Process Engineering for Sustainable Systems in the Department of Chemical Engineering at KU Leuven, within the Faculty of Engineering Science. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Zhejiang University in China, a Master’s degree from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a PhD from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Before joining KU Leuven in 2020 as an associate professor, she worked for six years at Victoria University in Australia as a Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer, including a joint appointment with Deakin University from 2019 to 2020. There, she gained over a decade of experience in functional membranes and hybrid separation systems for resource recovery and bioseparation, securing major Australian Research Council grants and industry funding.

Professor Yang leads the Membrane Engineering for Sustainable Solutions research group in the Process Engineering for Sustainable Systems (ProcESS) division, focusing on process intensification through smart responsive materials, nano/micro-structured interfaces, and hybrid technologies like membranes, extraction, absorption, and chromatography. Her work targets energy-efficient separation systems for sustainability, addressing the water-environment-resource nexus in circular economy contexts, including recovery of minerals, metals, volatiles, water, and biopharmaceuticals from waste streams, mining, energy, bioprocessing, and chemical sensing. She supervises numerous PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and maintains international collaborations across Australia, Singapore, China, Canada, USA, UAE, and the Netherlands. Key awards include the FWO Odysseus Grant of €935,000 in 2020 for the project 'Next generation membrane platform for ultra-fast purification in bio-processing,' and the ERC Starting Grant in 2022 for IonFracMem, developing ion-selective membranes inspired by human cell functions to fractionate critical raw materials like lithium and cobalt from ocean resources and battery waste, valued at up to €1.5 million. Her publication record exceeds 150 works, with recent highlights such as 'Optimizing Lithium Recovery from Simulated Battery Leachate via Selective Electrodialysis: Parametric and Statistical Insights' (Desalination, 2026), 'Achieving simultaneous fractionation of transition metal ions using solvent-extraction based membranes' (Journal of Membrane Science, 2025), 'Toward Rational Design of Ion-Exchange Nanofiber Membranes: Meso-Scale Computational Approaches' (Membranes, 2025), and contributions to Water Research on membrane technology for resource recovery (2026). Her innovations advance scalable, low-emission purification technologies.