Civil Engineer Lei Guo Honored Among Nation's Top Environmental Scientists Under 40

Lei Guo, assistant professor of civil engineering in the U of A's College of Engineering, has been named to the American Academy of Environmental Engineers & Scientists' 2026 40 Under 40 list by the American Academy of Environmental Engineers & Scientists, a national recognition honoring emerging leaders in environmental engineering and science. 

Guo works on one of the more stubborn environmental problems of the moment: getting PFAS out of water. Known as "forever chemicals," PFAS build up in the environment and the human body and resist the natural breakdown that clears most pollutants over time, which is what makes them so hard to remove. As lead principal investigator on a competitive grant from the U.S. Department of Defense's Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, Guo studies how these chemicals behave at the molecular level. It's foundational work for designing treatment methods that can actually capture them. Her approach lets her test large numbers of conditions quickly to map that behavior, and it has already produced provisional patents and publications in leading journals. 

She completed her doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, under Omar M. Yaghi, who shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing a class of porous, sponge-like materials that can trap targeted substances. Her doctoral work focused on covalent organic frameworks, a closely related family of materials. The Nobel committee singled out this broader line of science as a promising route to challenges that include separating PFAS from water, the problem at the heart of Guo's research today. She earned her bachelor's degree in chemistry from Lanzhou University in China and completed postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology, working on wastewater treatment, before joining the U of A faculty in August 2022. 

Beyond her lab, Guo founded the HERoes of Tomorrow Seminar Series, supported by the College of Engineering, to broaden awareness of STEM careers and support students pursuing engineering. She organizes and chairs symposia at national American Chemical Society meetings, reviews manuscripts for leading journals, serves on National Science Foundation funding panels and takes part in K-12 outreach such as Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day and the College of Engineering Summer Academies. She also serves as associate editor of the Journal of Hazardous Materials: Organics. 

The AAEES 40 Under 40 program recognizes professionals younger than 40 for leadership and contributions to the environmental engineering and science fields. Guo joins a national cohort honored for advancing solutions to environmental challenges through research, innovation and professional service. 

About the College of Engineering: The University of Arkansas College of Engineering is the state's largest engineering school, offering graduate and undergraduate degrees, online studies and interdisciplinary programs. It enrolls more than 4,700 students and employs more than 150 faculty and researchers along with nearly 200 staff members. Its research enterprise generated $47 million in new research awards in Fiscal Year 2025. The college's strategic plan, Vision 2035, seeks to build the premier STEM workforce in accordance with three key objectives: Initiating lifelong student success, generating transformational and relevant knowledge, and becoming the destination of choice among educators, students, staff, industry, alumni and the community. As part of this, the college is increasing graduates and research productivity to expand its footprint as an entrepreneurial engineering platform serving Arkansas and the world. The college embraces its pivotal role in driving economic growth, fueling innovation and educating the next generation of engineers, computer scientists and data scientists to address current and future societal challenges.