Inspired by Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw's words, the ultimate goal of my research group is to find a neat and successful solution that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and realise clean energy revolution. Specifically, we develop nature-inspired sustainable materials from renewable precursors (e.g., glucose, cellulose, lignin, etc.) and novel electrochemical systems (e.g., batteries, supercapacitors and their hybrids) for emerging carbon dioxide capture and energy storage applications.

Dr Zhen Xu is a Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Fellow, Assistant Professor, and Research Group Leader at Department of Materials, The University of Manchester, starting in October 2024. Besides, he is a member of the Henry Royce Institute and serves on the Editorial Board of Cambridge Prisms: Carbon Technologies. Until now, he has published over 50 papers in high-impact journals with a h-index of over 30 and contributed to 1 book chapter. He has also secured Royal Society Research Grant, Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant, and Royce Undergraduate Internship Scheme for his research group.

Prior to his independent academic position, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Electrochemistry at University of Cambridge from April 2022 to September 2024. In Prof. Alexander C. Forse's group, he focused on the development of electrochemical carbon dioxide capture with supercapacitors and batteries, which was partially in collaboration with the groups of Profs. Dame Clare P. Grey FRS and Michael De Volder. During this period, he was offered the awards of Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship and Isaac Newton Trust Fellowship.

He obtained PhD in Electrochemical Engineering from Imperial College London (2022), where he explored nature-inspired carbon materials for emerging sodium-ion batteries and capacitors under the supervision of Prof. Maria-Magdalena Titirici and worked closely with the groups of Profs. Yong-Sheng Hu, Mary P. Ryan FREng and Stephen J. Eichhorn FREng. His PhD works were recongised with Townend Prize for the best PhD thesis in the area of energy engineering and STFC Futures Early Career Award. Before starting his PhD studies, he received BEng in Materials Science and Engineering from Donghua University (2017), where he obtained National Scholarship twice with a final GPA of 92% (ranked top 1%). He studied electrospun polyindole nanofibres for all-solid-state flexible supercapacitors supervised by Dr Shengyuan Yang and Prof. Meifang Zhu at State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemical Fibres and Polymer Materials, with the support from Prof. Seeram Ramakrishna FREng.

Join Us
​My research group is accepting postdoctoral researchers, PhD students and academic visitors. Please send me an email for inquiry.

PhD Studentships for 2026 Entry
1. President’s Doctoral Scholarship (Link)
2. Dean’s Doctoral Scholarship (Link)
3. School of Natural Sciences Diversity PhD Scholarships (Link)
4. University of Manchester - CSC joint scholarship (Link)
5. EPSRC Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) (Link)
6. Centres for Doctoral Training (CDT) Programme (Link)
7. Postgraduate research funding opportunity search (Link)

Postdoctoral Fellowships
1. Royal Society Newton International Fellowship (Link)
2. Royal Society Career Development Fellowship (Link)
3. Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellowship (Link)
4. Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (Link)
5. EPSRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (Link)