Beckman Fellow, Center for Advanced Study Office of Risk Management and Insurance Reseach (ORMIR) Faculty Fellow, Assistant Professor

Research Focus: Energy-Water-Environment Sustainability, Environmental Engineering and Science, Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure Systems

Biography: Dr. Lei Zhao is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and assistant professor affiliated with the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE), and the National Center of Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His research concerns the physical and engineering processes in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer where most human activities and environmental systems are concentrated, with a particular focus on built surfaces and urban environments. He combines theory, Earth system modeling, remote sensing and in situ observations, and cutting-edge artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) methods to study land-atmosphere interaction and environmental fluid mechanics that relate to urban climatology and hydrology, urban climate change, and climate impacts and adaptation. Lei is the recipient of the U.S. NSF CAREER Award, the Timothy Oke Award from the International Association for Urban Climate (2023), and the AGU Global Environmental Change Early Career Award from the American Geophysical Union (2023). He received his Ph.D. degree in atmospheric physics from Yale University and B.S. degree from Nanjing University. Before joining at UIUC, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University.