On April 26, the Tianjin Science and Technology Awards Conference was held in Tianjin. The project "Isotopic Tracing of Heavy Metal Pollution in Environment " led by Professor Jiubin Chen from the School of Earth System Science of Tianjin University won the first prize of Tianjin Natural Science Award 2022, a breakthrough research achievement of the school since its foundation.

The project was jointly completed by four institutions including Tianjin University, the Institute of Geochemistry CAS, Nankai University, and Peking University. The project team has long engaged in the research on the source and processes of metals in various environments using stable isotope signatures, carrying out systematic work from method establishment, theoretical development to frontier problem solving, and has obtained a series of original achievements, including establishing a set of metal isotope analysis methods, determining the mechanisms of metal stable isotope fractionations in some specific processes, thus constructing a theoretical framework for the ustilization of metal isotopes in the surface environments, and tracking the sources, migration and transformation of heavy metals in various environments including the atmosphere, soil, river, lake even the ocean, and thus provided scientific and technological support for the prevention and control of heavy metal pollution. The team has published a total of 821 scientific articles in high level journals such as PNAS, SA, NG, NC, GCA. During the long-term research, Professor Jiubin Chen, the leader of the project, was appointed as a member of the general expert group of the "13th Five-Year key research Plan" of MOST and a member of the Expert Committee for Environmental Damage Identification and Evaluation of MOEE. He has also won honors such as the Kharaka Award of the International Association of Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry (IAGC), Tianjin Outstanding Talents, and was invited to serve as editors of international geoscience journals such as National Science Open, GCA, and AG.

For more information of Jiubin Chen's research group, please refer to the link: http://earth.tju.edu.cn/ISESS/cn/yjzx/twsqykxyjzx/zxgk.htm

By School of Earth System Science

Editor: Sun Xiaofang