Dr. Kang Xia

FACULTY AFFILIATE   |   Global Change Center

School of Plant and Environmental Sciences

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(540) 231-9323  •  kxia@vt.edu

Dr. Xia is a professor of environmental chemistry in the Virginia Tech School of Plant and Environmental Sciences. The foundation of her research program has been to understand negative human impact on water and soil quality and strategies to remediate the negative impact.

Dr. Xia’s environmental organic chemistry program includes the establishment of interdisciplinary research projects that link basic and applied research while involving collaborators within and outside of VT nationally and internationally.  Specific focus areas of Dr. Xia’s research program are:

1. Occurrence, fate, and impact of emerging contaminants and pesticides in soil and water systems;
2. Novel analytical methods for organic contaminant detection in complex environmental samples;
3. Biogeochemistry of organic carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus; and
4. Remediation technologies for organic contaminants in wastewater, biosolids, animal manure, and soil.

Dr. Xia established the Environmental Organic Chemical Analysis Lab, located at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, which provides critically needed and high‐quality analytical services and students training for collaborators within and outside of VT. She has collaborated with GCC affiliates on several federally-funded projects focused on the environmental occurrence, fate, and impact of emerging contaminants, as well as understanding issues related to antibiotic resistance and substance use disorders in Appalachia and beyond by monitoring environmental water samples.

Dr. Xia is also the Director of the new Center for Advanced Innovation in Agriculture, housed within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and is also the Associate Director of the Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station.