Dr. Wei Gao, an Assistant Professor in the Textile Engineering, Chemistry & Science Department, worked as a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow on fuel cells and batteries in the Los Alamos National Laboratory for two years. She obtained her Ph.D. in chemistry from Rice University in 2012, under the guidance of Professor Pulickel M. Ajayan. She also holds M.S. in analytical chemistry and B.S. in chemistry from the Nanjing University, China. Dr. Gao has several years of research experience in nanomaterials and nanotechnologies. Her Ph. D. thesis focused on a group of new materials named “graphene oxides” and their applications in fuel cells, supercapacitors, and batteries, as well as water purification systems. Her future research interests lie at the interfaces between nanotechnology development and textile engineering. Dr. Gao is also very enthusiastic about teaching. She received the Harry B. Weiser Teaching Award from Rice University when serving as a teaching assistant in the organic-chemistry lab. She also volunteered as a Judge in Science Fairs at several local high schools, a presenter on fuel cell topics to female students in the Expanding Your Horizons 2014 mini-conference in Santa Fe, and a teacher in Chinese for two semesters at a local Baptist church in Los Alamos, NM.
Her research focuses on interface engineering between fibrous structures and novel functional materials for targeted applications, including wearable electronics, biotextiles, water purification, thermal protection and sensing. The current research projects include:
1. Circuit Printing on Cotton Fabrics with Carbon Coatings
2. Scalable Manufacturing of Graphene Yarns via Wet Spinning Processes
3. Engineering High-Energy-Density Graphene Oxide Microsupercapacitors
4. Stretchable Electronics for Sensing and Energy Storage
5. Elastomeric Multifunctional Nonwoven
6. Engineering Interfaces between Graphene Oxide and Industrially-Relevant Polymers for Conductive Composites
To read more about Dr. Gao’s research and see her publications in this area, click here:
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=cbNEYPIAAAAJ&hl=en