As part of the cooperation project “Sino-German Water Supply Network (SIGN)”, the German researchers were invited by our school to attend the workshop of “Sino-German Water Quality-Lake Taihu” on the afternoon of March 28, 2019. Nearly 20 teachers and graduate students attended the workshop, including Professor Zou Hua, Associate Professor Li Yifei, and Assistant Researcher Ding Jiannan. As the vice dean of School of Environmental and Civil Engineering, Professor Zou Hua hosted the workshop.

In the workshop, Professor Zou Hua delivered a welcome speech, and introduced the general situation of our school and the current research status of the pollution of Taihu Lake. Then, the German researchers, including Dr. Lara Stelmaszyk from the TZW water research center, Dr. Andre Wilhelms from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Dr. Cora Schmid from the IWW water research centre, and Dr. Yunlu Jia from the RWTH Aachen University, gave the presentations about the occurrence of antibiotic resistance genes, the development of water quality monitoring equipment, the biological monitoring technology, and the risk of organic pollutants in the drinking water at Taihu Lake, respectively. The graduate students in our school, including Jiang Hang, Roger Mamitiana Razanajatovo, Huang Yejing, and Luo Xin, gave the presentations about the occurrences, adsorption/desorption processes, and biological interactive effects of some emerging pollutants in Taihu Lake, such as microplastics, antibiotics, and steroid hormones. In the workshop, the researchers and students from Germany and China had lively discussions on these presentations.

The overall aim of the international research project SIGN (Sino-German Water Supply Network) is to improve the water quality from the source to the tap and to provide action suggestions for sustainable water treatment in Taihu Lake Basin. This project is under the agreement between the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of China and Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) of Germany. Until now, 16 institutions from Germany and 10 institutions from China have joined this project. As one of the important members of the project, the research group of Professor Zou Hua in our school have participated in the joint sampling campaigns in Taihu Lake for several times and kept quite lively academic exchanges with the other members in the project.