A short story about Wenjie
Wenjie was born in a beautiful small city (Ganzhou) lying in the southeastern part of China. In 2010, he started his undergraduate study in Fudan University as an independent recruitment student and later joined professor Gengfeng Zheng’s research group. After one year’s research training, he started his independent project on photoelectrochemical energy conversion as a CURE fellow.
Wenjie’s research interest is energy harvesting, conversion and storage. He decided to follow his interest and pursuing a better understanding of the science behind practical “energy manipulation” in graduate school. Short after joining Prof. Song Jin’s research group in University of Wisconsin-Madison, he found that solar energy could be a good solution to fill the gap between fossil fuel era and nuclear fission era. Due to the intermittent nature of sunlight, the design of round-trip solar energy utilization systems requires both solar energy conversion and energy storage. He devoted most of his time in graduate school to the understanding, development and demonstration of a novel type of integrated solar flow battery device and hopefully paved the way for a practical new approach to utilizing the intermittent solar energy.
Having been trained as an electrochemist, Wenjie likes to think about the flow of electrons and ions through materials and interfaces, and ways to control them. He believes electrochemistry is a powerful tool and he is passionate about using it to develop different energy manipulating units to solve problems, satisfy needs and create new applications. After passing many Avogadro number of electrons through bulk electrodes and molecules in graduate school, Wenjie joined Prof. Peng Chen’s group in Cornell University and started his new journey of probing one molecule at a time through an optical microscope.
Education and Training
2020- Postdoctoral Associate, Cornell University, Advisor: Prof. Peng Chen
2019-2020 Postdoctoral Associate, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Advisor: Prof. Song Jin
2014-2019 Ph.D. in Chemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Advisor: Prof. Song Jin
2010-2014 B.S. in Chemistry, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Awards and Honors
Richard and Joan Hartl Award for Research Excellence in Materials Chemistry（2019)
Materials Research Societ Graduate Student Award (2018)
University of Wisconsin-Madison Graduate School Travel Grant (2017)
Fudan University Outstanding Graduate Award (2014)
Hui-Chun Chin and Chin-Dao Lee Chinese Undergraduate Research Endowment Fellow (2013)