Rate My Professor David Ji

Xiulei “David” Ji is the Bert and Emelyn Christensen Professor of Chemistry at Oregon State University, where he joined the Department of Chemistry as an Assistant Professor in 2012, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2017, and to Professor in 2021, assuming the endowed Christensen Professorship in 2023. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from Jilin University in 2003, M.S. in Materials Chemistry from the University of Waterloo in 2006, and Ph.D. in Materials Chemistry from the University of Waterloo in 2009. Ji completed his postdoctoral training as an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 2010 to 2012.

Ji's research in materials chemistry, electrochemistry, and physical chemistry focuses on sustainable paradigms for battery storage and power, investigating electrode structures, ion-electrode interactions, electrolyte solvation, interphases, and reaction principles. His Ji Research Team has advanced key technologies, including diffusion-free Grotthuss topochemistry for high-rate proton batteries (Nature Energy, 2019), anticatalytic strategies to suppress water electrolysis in aqueous batteries (Chemical Reviews, 2021), carbon electrodes for K-ion batteries (Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2015), a four-electron sulfur electrode with Cu2+/Cu+ redox (Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2019), and ultra-fast NH4+ storage in bilayered V2O5 (Chem, 2019). Recent innovations encompass iron-based cathodes for greener lithium-ion batteries and electrolytes enabling high-efficiency zinc batteries.

Recognized for his impact, Ji was named a Highly Cited Researcher by Web of Science in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, received the Milton Harris Award in Basic Research from the OSU College of Science (2023), Promising Scholar Award (2018), OSU Excellence in Postdoctoral Mentoring Award (2018), Loyd F. Carter Award for Outstanding Graduate Teaching (2018), NSF CAREER Award (2016), Scialog Fellow (2017), and Department of Energy Battery500 Seedling Award (2017-2019), and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2024). He serves as Associate Editor for Carbon Energy (Wiley), delivered the 2026 Gilfillan Memorial Lecture, and has secured funding including $3 million from the U.S. Department of Energy.