The outport communities and coastal centres of Newfoundland and Labrador are on the front lines of climate change.

Rising sea levels, melting ice, oil spills, microplastics and untreated wastewater threaten the marine ecosystem that defines so much of who we are in this place that we love.

These are issues being faced around the world. But the cleanup technologies that might be used in the temperate waters surrounding a tropical island are not going to work here.

This is the North Atlantic. And while our part of the ocean may offer sublimely beautiful vistas, it’s also not to be toyed with. It’s colder, harsher, more unforgiving. It presents a whole host of unique problems that require ingenious solutions.

That’s where Dr. Baiyu “Helen” Zhang comes in.

A civil engineer, environmental researcher and educator, she has spent her career at Memorial University designing smarter, cleaner ways to protect coastal regions from pollution.

Her work is changing how we respond to environmental threats, especially in cold, vulnerable areas.

Dr. Zhang was born in China and earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in environmental science and engineering at Jilin University. She moved to Canada for her PhD at the University of Regina and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Dalhousie.

In 2010, she joined Memorial’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science. Since then, she’s been at the forefront of environmental research.

Her specialty is coastal environmental engineering. She studies complex pollutants — like persistent organic compounds, microplastics and oil in icy waters — and develops practical ways to remove or neutralize them.

She works with materials like biochar and engineered clays that can absorb oil, heavy metals and microplastics from cold water. Her team also uses specialized microbes that break down toxic compounds, turning harmful waste into safer byproducts.

In Arctic and subarctic regions, where ice and low temperatures slow the natural breakdown of pollutants, Dr. Zhang’s solutions offer faster and more effective cleanup.

She’s also advancing “smart” filtration systems. These systems are “smart” because, unlike traditional systems, they can self-regulate and adapt to change. These are next-gen solutions that not only look after our shores but have implications and applications around the world.

 

Dr. Zhang received Memorial University’s President’s Award for Outstanding Research in 2020. Photo from Memorial University Archives.

 

To build a team and advance her work at Memorial, Dr. Zhang founded the Coastal Environmental Research Laboratory and became a lead researcher in the Northern Region Persistent Organic Pollution Control Lab.

She’s led more than 50 funded research projects and secured over $10 million in support.

Her work bridges industry with academia. She’s partnered with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Environmental and Climate Change Canada, Petroleum Research N.L. and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

In 2017, she was named a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Coastal Environmental Engineering. She also served as Memorial’s acting associate dean (research) from 2019 to 2020, contributing to the development of Memorial’s research strategy.

As a renowned educator, she’s supervised more than 40 graduate students and postdocs, so her influence is multiplying. The young engineers she’s mentored are now leading their own research and environmental projects across Canada and beyond.

Her work also extends into national and international networks. She’s a senior expert with the UNDP, an associate editor for the Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering and a past chair of the N.L. section of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering.

In every role, she connects the science of sustainability with the realities of coastal life.

And her efforts have earned widespread recognition. In 2020, she received Memorial’s President’s Award for Outstanding Research. In 2021, she was named a fellow of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering. In 2022, she joined the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars. And in 2023, she was inducted as a fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada.

Dr. Zhang’s work is about more than cleaning up. It’s about designing systems that can prevent environmental damage in the first place.

And it’s about more than the here and now. She’s helping to future-proof our coastlines for generations to come.

At a time when the environmental stakes couldn’t be higher, Dr. Zhang shows what it means to build solutions that last. For our communities. For our way of life. For the entire planet.