Dr. Weiwei Zhao received the PhD degree from the Wolfson School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Loughborough University in 2014. He worked as an associate professor at Wuhan University of Technology for seven years before joining the Birmingham Centre for Energy Storage (BCES) as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in 2021. He had over ten years’ research experience in the field of functional materials, especially for endowing polymer-based soft composites with multiphysical functions, in terms of electromechanical responses, conductive properties, mechanical reinforcement, or self-powering characteristics. Dr. Zhao has published over 25 peer-review journal papers and book chapters. He is a PI on NSFC projects and several industrial projects. Dr. Zhao collaborates with various research groups and institutions in UK, EU, and China.

In the current role, Dr. Weiwei Zhao has highly involved in a multidisciplinary project that aims to develop a cutting-edge technology that turns mechanical and ambient thermal energy to electricity. He is responsible for exploring the use of the technology to design and fabricate a prototype suspension for an electrical vehicle, which enables harvesting of the vibrational and damping energy loss to refuel the central electrical energy storage system.