Kwok Yat Wai Endowed Professor in Environmental and Biological Analysis

Professor Cai Zongwei is Chair Professor of the Department of Chemistry, HKBU. He graduated from Xiamen University in China with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry, and received his Doctorate degree in Analytical Chemistry from Marburg University in Germany. After conducting research work in the United States for a decade, Professor Cai joined HKBU in 2001, and was appointed the Founding Kwok Yat Wai Endowed Professor in Environmental and Biological Analysis in 2015.

The major research interest of Professor Cai is the method development and applications of chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry for trace analysis in complex systems such as the environment, food and biological samples. Professor Cai is an internationally recognised expert in dioxins, which are a group of persistent environmental pollutants. Their negative effects on human health have drawn global attention. In 2003, Professor Cai founded and became Director of the Dioxin Analysis Laboratory at HKBU, which was the sole academic facility in Hong Kong concerned with dioxins. In 2008 and 2014, he was invited to be the Principal Author of the 1st and 2nd United Nations Environmental Programme Asia-Pacific regional reports on persistent organic pollutants under the Stockholm Convention. Professor Cai also played a significant role in the establishment of the “Partner State Key Laboratory (PSKL) of Environmental and Biological Analysis (HKBU)” in 2013. It is HKBU’s first PSKL collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since then, he has become Director of the PSKL.

Professor Cai has received a number of national awards for his outstanding scholarly work. In 2003, he was awarded the title of “National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholar (Overseas, Hong Kong and Macao)” by the National Nature Science Foundation of China. He was named “Overseas Renowned Scholar” by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2004. In 2012, he received the second prize of the Nature Science Award of China. In 2016, Professor Cai together with his research team won the 2016 Science and Technology Award First Prize of the China Association for Instrumental Analysis.

Working in the field of analytical science for more than three decades, Professor Cai has produced over 300 peer-refereed research papers, many of which are among the most cited articles in academia, bringing him the honour of “Chemosphere (Elsevier) Highly Cited Author in 2005-2010” and the "Journal of Chromatography Top Cited Article 2001-2006 Award". He has also served on editorial boards of several international scientific journals including the prestigious Rapid Communication in Mass Spectrometry. He is the first, and also the only, Asian editor of the journal.