Principal Investigator: Frank Wania
Frank was trained in Environmental Science and Chemistry at the University of Bayreuth in Germany and in 1994 received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Toronto under the supervision of Don Mackay. After working for two years with NILU, the Norwegian Institute for Air Research in Tromsø, and two and half years as a freelance researcher in Toronto, he joined the University of Toronto in 1999, where he is currently a Professor.
Research Associate: Ying Duan Lei
Ying is a chemist educated at Jinnan University in China and McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. She has more than two decades of experience in teaching and performing instrumental chemical analysis at the University of Toronto. Her research interest is the determination of physical-chemical properties.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Postdoctoral Fellow: Faqiang Zhan
Faqiang obtained his Ph.D. in analytical chemistry at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in May 2019. In October of the same year, he joined the Wania group. He is interested in quantifying organic contaminants of concern in water and air and modeling the spatial variabilities using the high spatial resolution multimedia fate model. He is currently working on identifying the contaminant sources to the critical habitats of two species of whales in Canada.
Postdoctoral Fellow: Chengkang Chen
Chengkang joined the Wania group as a postdoctoral fellow at the the start of 2023. Before this, he obtained his bachelor degree in environmental sciences at Peking University in 2017, after which he continued his studies at Peking University and obtained his doctoral degree in environmental sciences in 2022. Currently, his research seeks to model the environmental fate of and human exposure to chlorinated paraffins (a complex group of contaminants of emerging concern), and identify the key factors driving these processes
Current Graduate Students
PhD Student: Yuhao Chen
Yuhao obtained his undergraduate degree in environmental chemistry from the University of Toronto in 2017 and joined the Wania group right after his graduation. His current project is about using equilibrium passive sampling to measure the fugacity and fugacity capacity of bioaccumulating organic contaminants in the diet and faeces of mammals with the goal of determining the maximum biomagnification potential.
PhD Student: Yuening Li
Yuening joined the Wania group in September 2019. He obtained his bachelor degree in Environmental Engineering from University of Science and Technology Beijing in China in 2016. He continued his studies at Nankai University and obtained his master degree in Environmental Engineering in 2019. His current research seeks to quantify the sources of contaminants of concern to Saint Lawrence Estuary Belugas and Southern Resident Killer Whales.
PhD Student: Jenny Oh
Jenny graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry with a Minor in Computer Science at McGill University, Montreal in 2021 and joined the Wania group in September of that year for her PhD. Her current research is aimed at developing a bioaccumulation food web model of persistent contaminants leading to the St. Lawrence Estuary beluga whales.
MSc Student: Desmond Ng