In response to the country's major needs for water pollution control, Prof. Qiao Junfei's team focused on common scientific issues that can potentially restrict the optimal control of urban wastewater treatment processes, and conducted in-depth research on the theory and key technologies of intelligent optimal control of these processes.

Their research has achieved a series of innovative outcomings in three areas: intelligent feature detection, self-organizing control, and collaborative optimization of urban wastewater treatment. These contributions have enriched the theory and methods of intelligent control, and overcome technological bottlenecks such as the online detection of effluent water quality, the high-precision control of key variables, and multi-objective dynamic optimization. The team has developed a complete system for the intelligent optimization of the control for urban wastewater treatment, and their efforts have promoted technological advancement in the industry.