Xiao-Lan Huang

Dr. Xiao-Lan Huang is an independent researcher and senior environmental scientist who focuses on the biogeochemistry of soil, water, plant, and solid wastes, including phosphorus. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring inspired him to learn soil science. He holds an MSc in Soil Ecology from Nanjing Agricultural University, China, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Chemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Oceanography at the University of Miami, USA. In 2007, Dr. Huang observed the catalytic phenomena of the phosphate ester hydrolysis in aged inorganic iron solutions and iron oxide nanomaterials under the aqueous environment with Michaelis-Menten kinetics behavior and suggested a hypothesis on the inorganic enzyme (University of Miami, 2008; RSC Advance, 2012; Astrobiology, 2018; Iron Oxide Nanoparticles: An Inorganic Phosphatase, 2019). His discovery is not only significant for organic phosphorus transformation in the current environment but also provides clues for biocatalysts and first life evolution. Dr. Huang further stated that all inorganic nanomaterials that have intrinsic enzyme-like properties can be considered inorganic enzymes due to their unique architectural features, which are comparable to the function of known enzymes (proteins) and ribozymes (RNA), in a new discovery catalog of biocatalysts. Dr. Huang is also an active participant in environmental science, as a peer reviewer for twenty international journals.