A research team led by Prof. Hu Bingliang and Prof. Yu Tao from the Xi'an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics (XIOPM) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed the physicochemical-informed spectral Transformer (PIST) model combined with ultraviolet-visible-shortwave near-infrared (UV–vis-SWNIR) spectroscopy for water quality sensing. Their study is published in Environmental Science & Technology and was selected as a cover article.