Professor Huan Feng is a coastal environmental geochemist with extensive experience in studying source, transport and fate of contaminants in estuarine and coastal systems using radionuclides (such as Th-234, Be-7 and Pb-210) as tracers. He has a solid knowledge in the ultra-clean technique, a variety of analytical instrumentation, and synchrotron-based technology application. He is also interested in developing geochemical models for transport and loadings of contaminants in riverine and estuarine systems. Collaborating internally with the colleagues at Montclair State, Professor Feng and his students are developing system dynamic models and using geographical information system (GIS) as a visualization tool to study urban environmental sustainability and contaminant distributions in the urban estuarine and coastal systems. The goal of this research is to integrate and interpret information pertinent to coastal management. The emphasis includes developing easily understandable products such as predictive models that permits answers to key management questions in the areas of source tracking down. It aims to demonstrate a methodology that provides federal and state agencies in their ultimate remedial investigation and feasibility study to: a) determine the nature and extent of pollution in the system, b) characterize various pollutants and identify their probable input sources, c) identify highly concentrated “hot spots” of specific contaminants (e. g., dioxins, PCBs, PAHs, Ag, Pb, Zn, etc), and d) assess the potential ecological impact. In addition, He is also involved in studying the speciation of chemical compounds and structural characterization of geological materials including sediments using synchrotron x-ray microbeam in collaboration with scientists in the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Collaborating internationally with colleagues at the East China Normal University, Xiamen University and Tianjin University, China, Professor Feng has been actively involved in biogeochemical cycle and contamination studies in the Yangtze River intertidal zone, western Bohai Bay and Xiamen Bay in China. In the past, Professor Feng was also actively involved in the project of "New York/New Jersey Harbor Contaminated Sediment Processing and Decontamination Technologies” under the federal Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) directed by US EPA Region 2. The goal of the project was to establish treatment facilities for production of beneficial use products from contaminated dredged material taken from the NY/NJ Harbor.

Professor Feng’s research activities include:
- System dynamic model development for urban watershed sustainability study and waste management;
- GIS application in Integrating pollution data and studying pollutant source function in urban estuarine and coastal systems;
- Contaminated sediment/soil environmental assessment and decontamination technology development;
- US-China collaboration to determine the fate and transport of contaminants in western Bohai Bay;
- Natural radionuclides as tracers for short- and long-term of transport and fate of sediments and associated contaminants in riverine, estuarine and coastal systems;
- Micro-scale study of chemical speciation and concentration of organic and inorganic compounds, and physical geometry of geological materials using synchrotron-based techniques.

Marine, estuarine and coastal environmental quality; estuarine and coastal marine pollution; trace metal biogeochemical cycle; land-sea transport; laboratory QA/QC procedures; sediment decontamination technology; application of synchrotron-based technology in speciation and compositional characterization of chemical compounds, and structural characterization of geological materials.