PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
| Dr. Yao is Cullen Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Houston. Yao is a Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), a Senior Member of National Academy of Inventors and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He received his Ph.D. degree in materials science and engineering from UCLA in 2008. After working as a senior scientist at Polyera Corporation and a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University with Prof. Yi Cui, he became a faculty member of the University of Houston in 2012. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2017 and Full Professor in 2020.
Yao has been leading research on the fundamental study of energy storage materials and devices, spanning from solid-state batteries for electric vehicles to multivalent-ion batteries and aqueous batteries for grid energy storage. He has authored more than 110 journal articles with 25,000 citations, and holds 10 US patents. He received the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2013), UH Teaching Excellence Award (2016), UH Research Excellence Award (2018), Top 1% Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (2018), Scialog Collaborative Innovation Award (2018 and 2020), and Cullen College of Engineering Professorship (2020). |
Honors & Awards
| 2020 | Fellow of Royal Chemical Society (UK) |
| 2020 | Senior Member of National Academy of Inventors |
| 2020 | Cullen College of Engineering Professorship |
| 2019 | Senior Member of IEEE |
| 2018 | Highly Cited Researchers List (Top 1% by citations) – Clarivate Analytics |
| 2018 | Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship, or Creative Activity at the Associate Professor Level – University of Houston |
| 2018 | Scialog Collaborative Innovation Award – Research Corporation for Science Advancement |
| 2017 | Scialog Fellow on Advanced Energy Storage – Research Corporation |
| 2016 | Junior Faculty Research Excellence Award – University of Houston, Cullen College of Engineering |
| 2016 | Teaching Excellence Award – University of Houston, Cullen College of Engineering |
| 2013 | Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award – U.S. Office of Naval Research |
| 2013 | Principal Investigator – U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy |
| 2012 | TcSUH Welch Foundation Professorship Award – Welch Foundation |
| 2013 | Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award – Oak Ridge Associated Universities |
| 2008 | Excellence in Graduate Polymer Science Research – American Chemical Society |
| 2007 | Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Students Abroad – China Scholarship Council |
| 2007 | ICI Student Award Finalist in Applied Polymer Science – American Chemical Society |
| 2007 | Dissertation Year Fellowship – UCLA |
| 2000 | Chun-Tsung Scholar – Chun-Tsung Endowment |
| 2000 | Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award – Shanghai Educational Council |
Leadership and Services
| 2018−present | Co-Director of Power electronics-Energy storage-Microgrids and Subsea Electrical Consortium (PEMSEC) |
| 2020-present | Editorial Board Member of eScience |
| 2016-present | Electrochemical Society University of Houston Chapter, Faculty Advisor |
| 2015-present | IEEE Nanotechnology Council Houston Chapter, Treasurer |
| 2013-present | Proposal reviewer for DOE Basic Energy Science, DOE Energy Frontier Research Center, DOE SBIT/STTR, ACS Petroleum Research Fund, National Science Foundation, NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship, Kentucky Science & Technology Foundation, Maryland Industrial Partnership, NASA Missouri Space Grant/EPSCoR Programs, European Research Council, China QiuShi Outstanding Young Scholar Award, German-Israeli Battery and Electrochemistry Research Program, Indo-US Science & Technology Forum Center. |
| 2012-present | Journal reviewer for ACS Energy Letters, ACS Nano, ACS Polymer Materials, Advanced Energy Materials, Advanced Materials, Angewandte Chemie, Chem, Chemistry of Materials, Chemical Review, Chemical Science, Chemical Society Review, Energy Environmental Science, Electrochimica Acta, Energy Storage Materials, JACS, Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Joule, Nano Energy, Nano Letters, Nano Research, Nature, Nature Communications, Nature Energy, Nature Materials, PNAS, Science, Science Advances, Scientific Reports, Small, Small methods. |
FUNDING
