Dr. Zhenbo Zhang is a tenure-track Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator at the Center for Adaptive System Engineering, ShanghaiTech University, where he leads the M³ (Manufacturing, Microstructure, Mechanics) Laboratory. He received his B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Chongqing University in 2008 and his M.S. from the Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011. He earned his Ph.D. in Materials Science from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) / Risø National Laboratory in 2014, and subsequently worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Manchester, UK, from 2014 to 2019, before joining ShanghaiTech University.
His research lies at the intersection of physical metallurgy, additive manufacturing (AM), and multiscale mechanics, with the goal of developing high-performance structural alloys — primarily titanium alloys and nickel-based superalloys — with high strength, damage tolerance, and reliable service performance. His group focuses on two complementary directions: (i) exploiting the unique non-equilibrium metallurgy of AM to expand the compositional and microstructural design space of alloys (Materials Design by AM, MDbAM), exemplified by new Fe-rich titanium alloys with fully equiaxed, texture-free microstructures and architected heterostructured or dual-phase cellular alloys; and (ii) revealing the deformation and failure mechanisms of alloys under near-service conditions — including hydrogen exposure and elevated-temperature fatigue — through multiscale characterization combining synchrotron radiation, in-situ SEM/TEM, and high-resolution digital image correlation (HRDIC), with particular expertise in strain localization at phase boundaries, grain boundaries, and twin-boundary complexions.
Dr. Zhang has published 56 peer-reviewed papers with over 2,780 citations and an H-index of 26, including first- and corresponding-author works in Nature Communications, Acta Materialia, Additive Manufacturing, and Materials Research Letters. His research has been supported by more than ten competitive grants as Principal Investigator.
Group Website: https://zbzhang85.github.io/zhang-research-group/
