Professor Lei Zuo appointed Collegiate Professor of Engineering

Lei Zuo has been appointed as the Herbert C. Sadler Collegiate Professor of Engineering for a 5-year term effective March 1st, 2023. The Herbert C. Sadler Collegiate Professorship in Engineering was established in February 2023 to honor Herbert C. Sadler, the University’s first Professor of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, who supervised the design and construction of the towing wave tank at the University of Michigan, the first owned and operated by an educational institution in the US.

This appointment was approved by the Regents at their March 2023 meeting.

Professor Zuo joined the University of Michigan faculty as a professor in August of 2022 from Virginia Tech where he was the Robert E. Hord Jr. endowed professor in mechanical, ocean and electrical engineering, and the director of NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center for Energy Harvesting Materials and Systems. His research interests include marine renewable energy, blue economy, energy harvesting, vibration and control, mechatronics design, vehicle engineering, and advanced manufacturing. His research has involved more than 90 projects and has been funded by NSF, DOE, ONR, DOT, EPA, USDA, USAID, US Army, NY/VA states, national labs, and industries.  He has authored 370 papers, including 15 with the best or highly cited paper awards. He has supervised 16 Ph.D. and 55 master’s students to completion of their degrees, mentored 17 postdocs, and advised about 200 undergraduates in research or senior design projects. Over the past decade, he and his team have conceptualized, designed and tested various wave energy converters of 100W-100KW scales. He is also leading ocean current and offshore wind energy research projects. 

“My vision,” says Zuo, “is to drive the research convergence of marine energy through multidisciplinary research collaboration, crosscutting academia-industry-community partnership, and multi-dimensional workforce training.”