Dr. Weiran Zheng received his B.Sc. degree from Wuhan University in 2009 and was awarded a Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) joint Ph.D. scholarship in 2012 to study in Prof. Shik Chi Edman Tsang’s group at the University of Oxford. After receiving his Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry from Wuhan University in late 2015, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Kwok-yin Wong's group at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. During this period, he participated in research projects in Hong Kong and Guangdong Province, China. His main research interests include electrocatalysis mechanism exploration and rational design of catalytically active sites of electrocatalysts for energy conversion. So far, he has published more than 30 papers in ACS Catalysis, ACS Energy Letters, Matter, Advanced Energy Materials, and other electrochemical/electrocatalytic journals. He joined Guangdong Technion - Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT) in January 2022 as an Associate Professor.

Group website: https://www.thezhenggroup.com/

Dr. Weiran Zheng’s research group in GTIIT mainly involves two aspects of electrocatalysis: mechanism understanding and rational catalyst design. The main focus is to apply in situ characterization techniques in electrochemistry (e.g., on-line differential mass spectrometry, combined electrochemical/atomic force microscopy system, in situ Raman spectroscopy, in situ UV-Vis spectroscopy, etc.) to directly observe the changes of electrodes/interfaces/electrolyte during electrochemical processes, so as to understand the actual physical meaning of electrochemical phenomena from a chemical/structural perspective. By studying the causes of catalyst deactivation, instability, and performance drop using in situ techniques, the group aims to use such information to guide the construction of efficient, highly stable, and practical electrocatalytic systems for a sustainable world. The group primarily targets three processes of particular environmental and energy impact: 1. electrochemical separation and conversion of carbon dioxide; 2. large current impure water electrolysis; 3. electrochemical biomass conversion. The goal is to understand the relationship between the nature of the active sites (surface configuration, electronic state, facet, etc.) and their catalytic activity/selectivity/stability from the scale of a single atom to nanoparticles, with the aim to achieve ~100% atomic efficiency.