Top engineering scientist wins major award

Top engineering scientist wins major award

A leading and internationally renowned engineering researcher from the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Auckland has won this year’s Shorland Medal, awarded by the New Zealand Association of Scientists.

Professor Wei Gao has had a long and distinguished career in Materials Science and Engineering including nanostructured materials, light metals and alloys, electronic properties of materials and advanced coating and surface technologies. He has focused particularly on energy and environmental related materials.

He gained his DPhil (PhD) from Oxford University and was a Research Fellow at MIT for five years. A Fellow of the Royal Society NZ and IPENZ, he sits on a number of editorial boards of international journals and is Honorary/Advisor Professor for eight overseas universities.

With an active research group of more than 20 students and postdoctoral fellows, Professor Gao has made major contributions in the field of materials science and engineering. They include a novel and simple technique of anodisation of titanium metal to make “black titania”. This material has the ability to absorb the full spectrum of solar radiation from visible light to infrared radiation and UV to dramatically improve the efficiency of collecting solar energy.

His group also developed novel techniques that increased the hardness of metals such as nickel, copper, gold and silver by 40%-70%. This patented technology increased wear by 50%-100% and is being used in New Zealand to improve the performance and life of machine parts, tools and equipment.

Professor Gao and his group also developed a new magnesium alloy system with high ductility that can be formed into mechanical parts directly from a casting state at room temperature. These low-cost magnesium alloy parts can be used in the automotive industry and in portable computer/electronic devices.

In environmental research, Professor Gao’s group developed nanostructured materials that can be used to decompose organic pollutants and recover valuable materials in wastewater and to clean contaminated air.

Over the course of his career he has published 680 papers in peer reviewed publications including 400 international journal papers, 14 patents and 11 books/book chapters.

The Shorland Medal is awarded in recognition of major and continued contribution to basic or applied research that has added significantly to scientific understanding or resulted in significant benefits to society.

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