Dr. Lu’s research areas include life-cycle analysis (LCA) of the energy and environmental impacts of transportation fuels, vehicle technologies, and related energy systems (e.g., petroleum and power sectors), development of emission inventories of air pollutants in multiple spatial (local, regional, and global) and temporal (past, present, and future) scales, environmental impact analysis of anthropogenic emissions, and emission evaluation through ground-, aircraft-, and satellite-based observations and chemical transport model simulations.

Dr. Lu is the lead developer of Argonne’s GREET​.Net (Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Technologies) LCA model, China-GREET model for LCA of transportation fuels and vehicle technologies in China, and China Vehicle Fleet model for energy and emission outlook analysis of the Chinese on-road vehicle fleet. He led or contributed to emission inventories development of several NASA, US DOE, and NOAA field campaigns, including ARCTAS, SEAC4RS, GVAX, KORUS-AQ, and FIREX-AQ, to support pre-mission flight planning and post-mission data analysis. He has compiled various regional and global emission inventories of air pollutants that are used worldwide in the climate and air quality modeling of more than 40 institutes in 12 countries.

Dr. Lu has authored more than 85 peer-reviewed journal articles, 5 peer-reviewed book/book chapters, and more than 100 conference papers and presentations, including the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) report on black carbon and tropospheric ozone assessment and the UNECE (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe) report on hemispheric transport of air pollution. He was recognized by the Web of Science Group of Clarivate Analytics as a Highly Cited Researcher from 2019 to 2022.