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

Yiying Xiong

yiying.xiong@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

GLBRC Associate Director
Wisconsin Energy Institute

  • Hydropower Engineering
  • Biofuel
  • Climate Change
  • Food-Energy-Water Nexus
  • Dam Safety
  • Dam Removal
  • Fish Passage

Christopher Zahasky

czahasky@wisc.edu

Energy Expert

Assistant Professor of Geoscience
College of Letters & Sciences

  • Contaminant hydrogeology - the study of how fluids and contaminants enter and travel through the subsurface
  • Carbon capture and storage - a technology for mitigating emissions from fossil fuel power plants and large industrial point sources
  • Conventional and unconventional energy resources - hydraulic fracturing processes for extracting shale gas and oil, geothermal energy production, and nuclear waste 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

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

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