Rate My Professor Yimin Wu

Professor Yimin Wu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo, where he holds the inaugural Tang Family Chair in New Energy Materials and Sustainability. He joined the university in 2019 as an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering and the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2025. He is cross-appointed to the Department of Chemistry and serves as director of the Materials Interfaces Foundry. Wu also serves on the board of directors of the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology and on the editorial board of Energy and Environmental Materials.

Wu obtained a Bachelor of Science in Materials Science and Engineering from Wuhan University of Technology in 2008 and a DPhil in Materials from the University of Oxford in 2013. His postdoctoral work included positions as a SinBeRise Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and roles at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory. His research focuses on the design of new energy materials for solar fuels and batteries, novel electronic, photonic, and responsive materials for flexible electronics and soft robotics, and energy-efficient neuromorphic computing. Wu has authored or co-authored more than 130 peer-reviewed journal papers in outlets including Nature, Nature Energy, Nature Communications, Science Advances, and Advanced Materials, and is an inventor on 10 US and international patents. He has delivered over 45 invited lectures worldwide. Among his awards are recognition as one of the World’s Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University, the Ontario Early Researcher Award, the Nanoscale Emerging Investigator Award, the WIN Research Leaders Award, the MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators under 35 Award finalist, the UK EPSRC Doctoral Prize, the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Students Abroad, and the SinBeRise Postdoctoral Fellowship. His research has been featured in more than 400 international news outlets.