Introducing our new staff scientific member Xiaohua Li

On July 1, Dr. Xiaohua Li started her position of Tenure Track Assistant Professor with an education profile in the Products and Processes for Biotechnology of ENTEG on 1 st July 2024.She will be responsible for several courses for the bachelor, master and engineering doctorate programme students, such as special process equipment, advanced thermodynamics and advanced separation methods. Her main research interests include separation technologies for bioproducts, metal extractions, waste recycling, sustainable process design, and application of artificial intelligence (AI) in chemical process control and development.

Xiaohua obtained her MSc degree in Chemical Engineering from the Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China in June 2010. She then worked as a research assistant in the same group. Subsequently, she received her PhD degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands in 2017. Her PhD projects was focused on the fractionation of pyrolysis oil by solvent extraction with ionic liquids, e.g., separation of aromatics and sugars, fractionation of acetic acid, glycolaldehyde and acetol. From November 2016 to June 2024, Xiaohua worked as a postdoctoral and senior researcher at KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. During this time, she contributed to several research projects, including EU projects, bilateral projects with companies, and her personal FWO postdoctoral grant (2019-2023). Her work focused on the extraction of metals from raw mineral ores and secondary resources, such as end-of-life permanent magnets and Li-ion batteries. For her FWO postdoctoral grant, she developed the ionic liquid-based aqueous biphasic systems for metal recovery.

Moreover, starting in September 2021, while working full-time as a postdoctoral researcher, she pursued her interest in AI during her spare time. She successfully earned her MSc degree in Artificial Intelligence from KU Leuven in 2023.