University of Virginia (U.Va.) environmental scientists recently led an international workshop at Nanchang University in China, focusing on Poyang Lake, the largest freshwater lake in China.

The workshop, funded by the National Science Foundation’s Environmental Engineering Program, focused on the development of joint environmental and engineering research projects between researchers in the United States and China. It was co-led by U.Va. professor of environmental sciences David E. Smith and Shaw L. Yu, U.Va. professor emeritus of environmental engineering.

The workshop grew out of a 2007 visit to U.Va.‘s School of Engineering and Applied Science and the College of Arts & Sciences’ Department of Environmental Sciences by Wen-Bin Zhou, president of Nanchang University, the largest university in east-central China with 80,000 full-time students. He toured U.Va. facilities and attended presentations on integrated data collection activities by researchers with U.Va.‘s Virginia Coast Reserve Long-Term Ecological Research project.

Other workshop participants included representatives from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, researchers from the University of Maryland at Baltimore, Auburn University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Hawaii and a large number of Chinese engineers and researchers.