Congratulations to Prof Jiao and Prof Zheng on their well-deserved promotions!

Please join me in extending warm congratulations to CSI’s two Chief Investigators who have been promoted to full professors this week at University of Adelaide: Professor Yan Jiao & Professor Yao Zheng.  This is a significant recognition of their dedication, expertise and contributions to the field.

Prof Jiao is currently the Deputy Head of School of Chemical Engineering at University of Adelaide. She is also an Australian Research Council Future Fellow.  She has been distinguished as a Rising Star by The Australian and received a Young Tall Poppy Award. Prof. Jiao’s research focus on designing sustainable energy conversion materials through computational techniques. She has published more than 110 papers in esteemed journals such as Nature Energy, Nature Communications, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Energy & Environmental Science. Her research publications have collectively received more than 32,000 citations, with an h-index of 67. She has been recognised as a Highly Cited Researcher in Chemistry by Clarivate Analytics since 2019.

Prof Zheng is ARC Future Fellow in the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Adelaide. He has worked for the past 15 years in electrocatalysis by combining experimentation and theoretical computation to drive discoveries of catalysis principles and catalyst design. He has developed new electrocatalyst candidates for various electrocatalysis applications including oxygen-and hydrogen-involving reactions, CO2 reduction, and other electrocatalytic-refinery processes. Prof.  Zheng has published >150 research papers, which have attracted > 36,000 citations, with an h-index of 76. He has been recognised as Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher (Chemistry)  since 2019. From the recent ARC Discovery project announcement, Prof Zheng has successful secured another DP project from 2024 aiming aims sustainable production of hydrogen and chlorine-containing chemicals via development of revolutionary electrocatalysis that uses abundant seawater to replace scarce freshwater as feedstock. Fundamental science will be developed for addressing the knowledge gap between well-developed purified water electrolysis and emerging saline surface water electrolysis. Anticipated outcomes will include new knowledge of complex reaction mechanism(s), new electrode materials design, and relative device development for seawater electrolysis. This project will significantly benefit renewable energy use and commodity-chemicals manufacturing, together with reducing pressure on Australia’s freshwater scarcity.

Congratulations to Prof Jiao and Prof Zheng on their well-deserved promotions!