Sarah (Xiao) Wu Assistant Professor

Sarah (Xiao) Wu joined the Department of Biological Engineering as a tenure-track assistant professor in August 2016. Prior to joining UI, Professor Wu has four years of experience working as a postdoc (later promoted to research associate) with the University of Minnesota and two years with the Chemical Engineering Department in Tshing Hua University in Beijing, China.  Professor Wu has training in Environmental and Biological Engineering with research experience covering a wide range of topics in studying advanced technologies to treat animal wastes and crop production residues for nutrients management and resource recovery. Xiao’s research interests include biological, physical and chemical processes for animal manure and organic waste treatment and nutrient management with strength in evaluation, research, development, improvement and application of various bioreactors; bioresource recovery, bioenergy and biohydrogen, nutrient cycling to produce value-added products, and bioconversion and bioremediation; and environmental microbiology and biochemistry. She is also developing and evaluating a novel non-thermal plasma system (for which Professor Wu has a pending patent) to convert soybean oil and/or other wasted oils to biodiesel in a much more efficient way than does the conventional transesterification method.