Associate Professor Zhenhai Xia

Professor Zhenhai Xia is a Deputy Director of the Australian Carbon Materials Centre at UNSW. Before joining UNSW, he was a Full Professor jointly appointed at Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Department of Chemistry at the University of North Texas, USA. Previously, he was an Assistant/Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Akron (2006-2010); a Senior Researcher at Brown University, USA (2000-2005); a Humboldt Scholar at German Aerospace Centre (DLR), Germany (1997-1999); and an Assistant/Associate/Full professor at Hebei University of Technology (1990-1998). He was an Associate Director of the Graduate School (1993-1995) and the Chair of Department of Materials Science and Engineering (1995-1998) at Hebei University of Technology.

Professor Xia’s expertise covers the multiscale modelling and characterisation of catalysis and energy conversion and storage materials, biological and biomimetic materials, and nanostructured materials for energy-related and biomedical applications. He has published more than 200 journal publications, including Science and Nature, with citations over 23,000 and an h-index of 53 (as of Aug 2022, Google Scholar). He has also published a sole-authored book on biomimetic materials and authored 7 book chapters. He serves as an Associate Editor of Frontier in Energy Materials.  He has been honoured with many international awards, including the 2019 IUMRS-Somiya Award from the International Union of Materials Research Societies, 2019 Scientist Award from the International Association of Advanced Materials, the 2015 Nanoscience Research Leader Award from Science Letters, and the 1997 Humboldt Research Fellowship Award from Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.