Keynote Speaker
Biography
Zuankai Wang is the Associate Vice President (Research and Innovation), Kuok Group Professor in Nature-Inspired Engineering, Chair Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Director of Research Center for Nature-Inspired Science and Engineering at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). He received his BSc from Jilin University, his MSc from the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, and his PhD from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Before joining PolyU, Prof. Wang was a Chair Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and was the Associate Dean in the College of Engineering at the City University of Hong Kong. He is the Executive Editor-in-Chief of Droplet (Wiley).
Prof. Wang is a Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the International Society of Bionic Engineering. He has won numerous awards, including the Nukiyama Memorial Award (2024), Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of Year 2023 (Engineering and Technology), Croucher Senior Research Fellowship, Research Grant Council Senior Research Fellowship, BOCHK Science and Technology Innovation Prize, Green Tech Award, Xplorer Prize, and the 35th World Cultural Council Special Recognition Award. He was named as “Highly Cited Researcher” by Clarivate Analytics (2022, 2023).
Nature-inspired surfaces for water-energy nexus
Zuankai WANG
Abstract
Water and energy are not separate entity, but closely coupled together. Current water energy nexus suffers from low energy efficiency and high environment impact. Fundamentally, water-energy nexus is governed by surfaces. However, surface innovation to address water and energy nexus is not easy, because individual water and energy processes often involve trade-off on surface properties. In this talk, I will discuss our recent efforts in developing a new and generic nature-inspired surface design theory that can fully unleash the inherent advantages of water (flowing, high latent heat and large surface tension) for efficient water-energy nexus, with typical applications in water collection, energy harvesting, thermal management.