Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering
The Henry Samueli School of Engineering

Adjunct Professor, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
School of Biological Sciences

Adjunct Professor
College of Health Sciences

Environmental Engineering; Water Quality; Water Reuse; QMRA; Water Microbiology, Microbial Ecology

Laboratory Webpage

* Senior Career Award for Innovation in Teaching, UCI HSSoE, 2017
* Extraordinary Service Award for Public Communication of Research Advances, UCI CEE, 2017
* Faculty Mentor of the Month, Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, UC Irvine, June 2011

Research in Dr. Jiang’s group fall in two main areas:
1) Water/environmental biotechnology, and
2) Aquatic/marine microbial ecology.

Sustainable water supply through seawater desalination and wastewater reuse is the future to meet water demand both locally and internationally. Dr. Jiang group studies technologies to reduce energy consumption for seawater desalination by prevention of membrane biofouling. For wastewater reuse, public health risk is the most critical question. Dr. Jiang group is developing online monitoring system to monitor the fate of microbial pathogens in wastewater treatment and water reuse. Risk assessment models are applied to risk analysis and policy decision.

Costal water represents an important economic resource. The second area of Dr. Jiang research focuses on microbial quality in the coastal water. Her team has investigated pathogens in coastal water and human health risk. They helped the cities and counties to identify the source and causes of water pollution using microbial source tracking. More recently, control of harmful algal blooms and toxigenesis of diatom species Peudonitzchia has been an active area of investigation.

* Lifetime Achievement Awards, 2024, by Chinese-American Professors in Environmental Engineering and Science
* Outstanding Publication Award, 2023, by Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors
* Innovator of the Year Award, Potable Pathogen Analyzer, 2021, Beall Applied Innovation

Dr. Sunny Jiang is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of California, Irvine, where she also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and serves as a graduate faculty in the Environmental Health Science program in the School of Public Health. Her research focuses on microbiological water quality, engineered and natural water treatment technologies. Dr. Jiang authored over 140 research papers in these areas, served on U.S. National Academies’ Water Reuse committee and WHO committee for Desalination. Dr. Jiang is the principal investigator of several on-going research projects, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Viral Surrogate for Water Reuse project, which investigates viral removal efficiency during wastewater reclamation processes to ensure water reuse safety. Dr. Jiang received her Ph.D. from University of South Florida in 1996 and her postdoctoral training from University of Maryland with Dr. Rita Colwell in 1997.

https://publons.com/researcher/2705861/sunny-jiang/

American Society for Microbiology

Member
Center for Virus Research

Biotechnology

Environmental Health Sciences

Environmental Toxicology

Public Health

Virology

Center for Virus Research http://cvr.bio.uci.edu/

UCI Water-Energy Nexus Center https://research.uci.edu/center/uci-water-energy-nexus-center/

Link to this profile
https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=4873

Last updated
06/10/2025