About the PI - Kent Zheng

Kent Zheng is an Assistant Professor in McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at UT Austin. He officially joined UT in Spring 2024, before which he had been an Affiliate PI at UT since May 2023. He was appointed by the Electrochemical Society to the role of Associate Editor (2024-present) for the journal ECS Advances.

Kent was a postdoctoral research associate with Prof. Joe Checkelsky at MIT Physics Department during 2021~2023. He studied scalable synthesis of mesoscale ordered materials that host exotic electrochemical, mechanical, and electronic properties.

He obtained his PhD in 2020 under the supervision of Prof. Lynden Archer at the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University. His PhD thesis study focused on the design of reversible metallic anodes in batteries, including Li, Zn, Al, etc., by controlling crystal growth at dynamic interfaces. 

Kent earned his bachelor’s degrees in materials science and in history, respectively, from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2017. In 2014~2017, he worked in Frontier Research Center for Materials Structures (FRCMS) as an undergraduate research assistant. His research in FRCMS centered on atomic-scale characterization of phase transformations in light-weight alloys, e.g., Mg and Al, using advanced transmission electron microscopy. 

As of November 2024, he has co-authored more than 60 peer-reviewed research papers. He is recognized with the Early Career Award from the Electrodeposition Division of the Electrochemical Society and the Forbes 30 Under 30 (2025).

In his leisure time, he likes running/swimming, singing, and calligraphy. He has been serving as a coach with the American Chemical Society for US Chemistry Olympiad (both national and central Texas).

Email: kentz@utexas.edu