John Z. Wen

Professor, Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering

Research interests:Nano energetic materials; chemical propulsion; heating and power sources for MEMS; CO2 reduction; nanomaterials for energy systems; flame synthesis of nanostructures; smart energy management.


Biography

Professor John Wen, obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto with Professor Murray Thomson and Professor Marily Lightstone. He was a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) postdoctoral fellow who spent more than two years in the Green group at the Department of Chemical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As a visiting scientist, he worked with Professor John Vander Sande at the Department of Material Science and Engineering at MIT and with Professor Markus Kraft at the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Wen is currently a member of American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME) and Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineering (CSME). He serves as an associate editor of the International Journal of Energetic Materials and Chemical Propulsion. He received the prestigious Ontario Early Researcher Award (2015) and the Discovery Accelerator Award from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (2014).

Education

  • Post-Doctoral Fellow, Chemical Engineering, MIT

  • PhD, Mechanical Engineering, University of Toronto, 2005

  • MASc, Mechanical Engineering, University of Toronto, 2002

  • BSc, Power Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, China

John Z. Wen

Research

The mission of University of Waterloo Laboratory of Emerging Energy Research is to examine existing energy conversion processes and develop novel technologies for future energy utilization and storage systems.

Novel nanostructures are investigated for their synthesis and applications as energy storage media. Carbon nanotubes are being studied for their characterization and patterning for electrode material in fuel cells and supercapacitors. One of our major research targets is the multi-scale transport phenomena during material synthesis and energy conversion.

Our group of collaborators study the thermodynamics, reaction kinetics and transport phenomena during combustion of biofuels. We also study the growth mechanisms of metallic nanoparticles and carbon nanostructures in combustion synthesis of nanostructures and modeling the growth and formation of nanowires and nanoparticles.

Research interests

  • Nano energetic materials

  • Chemical propulsion

  • Heating and power sources for MEMS

  • CO2 reduction

  • Nanomaterials for energy systems

  • Flame synthesis of nanostructures

  • Smart energy management

Publications

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