Energy Experts

From biofuels to batteries, UW–Madison has a wealth of expertise in energy. The researchers working in energy at UW–Madison are generating the knowledge and clean technologies that will accelerate a transition to sustainable, resilient, and affordable energy systems. This resource connects you to UW–Madison faculty conducting research in all areas of energy. If you are a UW–Madison faculty member working in energy and would like to be added to this list, please email communications@energy.wisc.edu

For specific media requests, please contact Mary Blanchard.

Name/Email Title/Department Research Interests

Tracey Holloway

taholloway@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Jeff Rudd and Jeanne Bissell Professor of Energy Analysis and Policy
Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies

  • Air quality research
  • Atmospheric dynamics
  • Climate change and public health
  • Regional air quality

Steph Tai

tai2@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Professor of Law
University of Wisconsin Law School

  • Judicial decision-making about environmental and energy regulation
  • Development of private systems for environmental governance

Timothy Donohue

tdonohue@bact.wisc.edu

Investigator

WEI & GLBRC Director, Ira L. Baldwin Professor of Bacteriology
College of Agricultural & Life Sciences

  • The pathways and networks that microbes use to grow, generate biomass or produce alternative fuels from sunlight or other renewable sources of energy
  • Microbial networks and metabolic and regulatory pathways
  • Genome sequencing, microarrays, proteomics and molecular techniques

Trey Sato

tksato@glbrc.wisc.edu

Investigator

Senior Scientist
Wisconsin Energy Institute

  • Metabolic engineering of yeast for biofuel synthesis from plant feedstocks
  • Stress tolerance in microbes

Tom Eggert

tleggert@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Senior Lecturer
Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies

  • Role of Microfinance in the developing world
  • Greening of business, including brand and reputation building
  • Social responsibility of business
  • Environmental leadership programs, including state and federal programs
  • Socially responsible investing

Todd Newman

tpnewman@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Assistant Professor of Life Sciences Communication
College of Agricultural & Life Sciences

  • strategic science communication
  • science communication training, marketing, and branding
  • Public opinion and media coverage of climate and energy issues

Katherine (Trina) McMahon

trina.mcmahon@wisc.edu

Investigator

Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering
College of Engineering

  • Water quality
  • Freshwater sciences
  • Wastewater treatment
  • Microbiology
  • Nutrient removal
  • Water quality modeling
  • Limnology

Troy Runge

trunge@wisc.edu

Investigator

Patrick Walsh and Noreen Warren Endowed Professor and Chair, Biological Systems Engineering
College of Agricultural & Life Sciences

  • Bioenergy: biomass composition impact on bioprocessing systems, including anaerobic digestion, combustion, gasification, and catalysis
  • Biomaterials: pulp, paper, bio-based chemicals, cellulose composites and nonwoven structures

Thea Whitman

twhitman@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Associate Professor of Soil Science
College of Agricultural & Life Sciences

  • Soil biogeochemistry
  • Microbial ecology
  • Global environmental change
  • Soil organic carbon
  • Climate change

Thatcher Root

twroot@wisc.edu

Affiliate

Professor of Chemical & Biological Engineering
College of Engineering

  • Surface chemistry
  • Catalysis
  • Diffusion in porous media
  • Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy
  • Mediated fuel cells
  • Selective oxidation catalysts

Victor Ujor

ujor@wisc.edu

Affiliate

Assistant Professor of Food Science
College of Agricultural & Life Sciences

  • Renewable fuels and chemicals
  • Metabolic engineering/synthetic biology
  • Bio-based waste-to-energy technologies
  • Bioprocess design

Reid Van Lehn

vanlehn@wisc.edu

Affiliate

Hunt-Hougen Associate Professor
College of Engineering

  • Molecular simulation
  • Machine learning
  • Solvent effects
  • Nano-bio interactions
  • Engineering nanomaterials and soft materials
  • Multiscale modeling

Ophelia Venturelli

venturelli@wisc.edu

Affiliate

Assistant Professor of Biochemistry, Bacteriology, and Chemical and Biological Engineering
College of Agricultural & Life Sciences

  • Microbe-microbe interactions
  • Microbial engineering
  • Microbial metabolism

Vicki Bier

vicki.bier@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Professor Emeritus of Industrial & Systems Engineering
College of Engineering

  • Critical infrastructure protection
  • Security
  • Technology hazards
  • Risk analysis
  • Decision analysis
  • Operations research

Victor M. Zavala

victor.zavala@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Baldovin-DaPra Professor of Chemical & Biological Engineering
College of Engineering

  • Computational optimization and statistics
  • High-performance computing
  • Energy systems
  • Agricultural systems
  • Materials

William Banholzer

wbanholzer@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Research Professor, Honorary Fellow of Chemical & Biological Engineering; Senior Advisor, Wisconsin Energy Institute
College of Engineering

  • Commercialization of technology
  • Materials and process development with emphasis on the intersection with business opportunities

David L. Weimer

weimer@lafollette.wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Edwin E. Witte Professor of Political Economy, Political Science, and Public Affairs
College of Letters & Sciences

  • Energy Policy
  • Strategic Petroleum Reserves
  • Cost-Benefit Analysis

Whitney Loo

wloo@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Assistant Professor of Chemical & Biological Engineering
College of Engineering

  • Energy Storage Technology
  • Batteries
  • Polymer Electrolytes
  • Fuel Cell Membranes
  • Membrane-Based Separations

Wenxiao Pan

wpan9@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering
College of Engineering

  • Multiscale modeling
  • Numerical methods
  • Scientific computing
  • High performance computing
  • Fluid-solid interactions
  • Complex fluids
  • Multiphase flows
  • Soft matter
  • Energy storage materials
  • Manufacturing

John C. Wright

wright@chem.wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Andreas C. Albrecht Professor of Chemistry
College of Letters & Sciences

  • Analysis of nanomaterials using imaging and photoluminescence
  • Analysis of ultrafast quantum dot dynamics
  • Femtosecond and picosecond laser systems
  • Spectroelectrochemistry
  • Spectroscopy of biologically relevant metal centers

Sheldon (Xiaodong) Du

xdu23@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Associate Professor of Agriculture & Applied Economics
College of Agricultural & Life Sciences

  • Economics of energy
  • Commodity markets
  • Economics of agriculture
  • Applied econometrics

Xuejun Pan

xpan@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Professor of Biological Systems Engineering
College of Agricultural & Life Sciences

  • Biomass pretreatment for bioconversion
  • Lignocellulose saccharification to fermentable sugars
  • Conversion of lignocellulose to chemicals and liquid fuels
  • Production of value-added products from cellulose, lignin, and hemicellulose
  • Plant cell wall changes during biorefining

Xudong Wang

xudong@engr.wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
College of Engineering

  • Oxide nanomaterials growth and characterization
  • Piezoelectric nanostructures and nanodevices for mechanical energy harvesting
  • Semiconductor nanomaterials and devices for solar energy harvesting and energy storage
  • Nanoscale piezoelectric effect and piezotronics
  • Piezocatalysis and interface between piezoelectricity and electrochemistry

Yaoping Zhang

yaoping.zhang@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Senior Scientist
Wisconsin Energy Institute

  • Feedstock pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysate production
  • Microbial performance in hydrolysates produced from various feedstocks
  • Engineering microbes for biofuel production
  • Multiomic fermentation
  • Conversion residue valorization

Younghyun Kim

younghyun.kim@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
College of Engineering

  • Secure and reliable CPS
  • Powering the loT
  • Lower-power embedded systems
  • Energy harvesting and storage

Martin Zanni

zanni@chem.wisc.edu

Energy Expert

V. W. Meloche-Bascom Professor of Chemistry
College of Letters & Sciences

  • Two-dimensional infrared (2D-IR) spectroscopy
  • Two-dimensional white-light (2D-WL) spectroscopy and microscopy
  • Two-dimensional sum-frequency generation (2D-SFG) spectroscopy
  • Amyloid formation
  • Ion channels and membrane proteins
  • Energy transfer of solar cell materials
  • Aggregation of crystallin proteins
  • Wide-field femtosecond infrared imaging

Zachary Freedman

zfreedman@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Assistant Professor of Soil Microbiology
College of Agricultural & Life Sciences

  • Microbial communities and their ecosystem functions
  • Microbiome
  • Plant-soil-microbial interactions
  • Quantitative, trait-based microbial ecology

Zhou Zhang

zzhang347@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Assistant Professor of Biological Systems Engineering
College of Agricultural & Life Sciences

  • ​Crop growth monitoring and yield prediction
  • High-throughput image based plant phenotyping
  • Hyperspectral/multispectral imagery, RGB imagery and LiDAR
  • Machine learning for high dimensional data analysis
  • Multi-source remote sensing data fusion
  • Sustainable agriculture
  • UAV-based imaging platform developments for precision agriculture