Dr. Haoran Duan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). His research focus on new biotechnologies and process modelling towards sustainable wastewater management. 

He received his PhD (2019) from the University of Queensland (UQ) and Bachelor degree (2014) from Tianjin University. Before HKU, he served as Senior Lecturer at UNSW and Senior Research Fellow at UQ, and holds the Australian Research Council Inaugural Industry Fellowship (2023). 

Working with water utilities, he co-led the world’s first full‑scale mitigation of nitrous oxide emissions from wastewater treatment. He has advanced a novel energy‑neutral wastewater process and a new sludge‑digestion technology from lab to pilot. These contributions have been recognised with multiple awards including the Environmental Science & Technology Best Paper Award.

As chief investigator, Dr. Duan has secured more than AUD 5 million in competitive funding. He has authored over 75 papers in journals such as Water Research, Environmental Science & Technology, Nature Water, and Nature Sustainability, with over 4,000 citations (H‑index 35). He is Stanford/Elsevier’s World’s Top 2% Scientists (2024, 2025). He serves as Editor of Water Research X and Associate Editor of CleanMat. He reviews grants for the Australian Research Council and the German Research Foundation, and sits on the IWA Modelling and Integrated Assessment Specialist Group committee.