Oklahoma State University is pleased to announce that Dr. Zheyu Jiang will be joining its School of Chemical Engineering as an assistant professor, effective August 1, 2021. Prior to this position at OSU, Prof. Jiang worked as a Process Development Engineer in the Crop Protection Process Sciences and Technology R&D group at Corteva Agriscience (formerly Agriculture Division of DowDuPont). Prof. Jiang obtained his BChE from the University of Minnesota in 2014 and PhD from Purdue University in 2018.

At OSU, Prof. Jiang will lead the Computational Laboratory for Advanced Manufacturing and Sustainability (CLAMS), where he will develop advanced process systems engineering methods and tools to solve some of the most critical challenges of our time, including separations, pharmaceutical manufacturing, digital agriculture, sustainability, Food-Energy-Water Nexus, and so on. Prof. Jiang has a broad interest in various fields of process systems engineering, such as mathematical modeling, process optimization and control, conceptual process synthesis and design, machine learning, and data analytics.

In the near term, Prof. Jiang is committed to combining his expertise in process systems engineering and agriculture and specialty chemicals manufacturing (in particular, agrochemical manufacturing) to address various sustainability issues related to Food-Energy-Water-Climate Nexus:

“By 2050, the global population is expected to reach 9.7 billion. Thus, the global food production must increase by at least 70% by 2050. Considering that current agriculture and food sectors are already one of the largest consumers of global water, energy, and land resources, the key question that is critical to the sustainable development of human society in the 21st century is the following - How can we massively increase crop production without putting additional stress on land, energy, and water resources while at the same time ensuring sustainability for all?”

To address this grand challenge, CLAMS will work closely with experts in agronomy, biology, chemistry, chemical and environmental engineering, economics and finance, artificial intelligence, data science, and operations research to reexamine and renovate all human activities involved in the R&D, production, distribution, processing, and consumption of agricultural products, thereby offering data-driven, systems-oriented solutions and insights to the sustainable intensification of global agriculture and food systems. To learn more about the research conducted at CLAMS, please visit its Research Page.