Bio
Peijia Ku is an Environmental Scientist in the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health group at Environmental Sciences Division at ORNL, focusing on ecotoxicology and biogeochemistry. She joined ORNL in 2020 as a postdoc prior to being promoted to her staff position in 2022. She obtained a Ph.D. in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) in 2020, an MS in Environmental Science from Jinan University (Guangzhou, China) in 2015, and a BS in Environmental Engineering from Dalian University of Technology (Dalian, China) in 2012. She has obtained training and experience in environmental engineering and sciences, especially in ecotoxicology and biogeochemistry, from molecular to ecosystem scale. Her research interests include but are not limited to, biogeochemical, hydrological, and microbiological processes mediating environmental contaminants (i.e., mercury), mechanisms controlling the methylation and demethylation of mercury, and the integrated controls on the bioaccumulation of methylmercury in the aquatic and terrestrial food webs. Peijia is currently working on the development and evaluation of mercury remediation technologies in the aquatic environment, as well as the risk assessment of environmental stressors (i.e., regulatory toxicity testing) to local aquatic ecosystems.