Rate My Professor Haibo Zhai

Haibo Zhai is the Roy & Caryl Cline Distinguished Chair in Engineering, a Wyoming Excellence Chair, and Professor of Environmental Engineering in the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering at the University of Wyoming. He earned a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from North Carolina State University in 2008, an M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Tongji University in 2002, and a B.S. in Water Supply and Drainage Engineering from Xi’an University of Technology in 1999. Since August 2020, he has served as Associate Professor and Professor at the University of Wyoming. Previously, at Carnegie Mellon University, he was Associate Research Professor from 2017 to 2020, Assistant Research Professor from 2012 to 2017, Manager for Integrated Environmental Control Model Development from 2010 to 2020, and Postdoctoral Fellow from 2008 to 2010. He also held a brief Postdoctoral Research Associate position at North Carolina State University in 2008. Currently, Zhai is an Adjunct Professor in the University of Wyoming's School of Energy Resources and School of Computing, as well as in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. He directs the development of the Integrated Environmental Control Model, a tool used worldwide for power plant modeling and techno-economic assessment.

Zhai's research focuses on carbon capture, utilization, and storage; hydrogen energy; bioenergy; nuclear energy; and the energy-water nexus under carbon constraints for climate change mitigation. His contributions to carbon capture and storage have informed U.S. national rulemaking on power sector carbon dioxide emissions and appear in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. He has reviewed for the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and agencies in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Poland. Zhai is a lead author for the 2027 IPCC Methodology Report on Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies, Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, serves on the advisory board of iScience, and is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was an appointed member of the Transportation Research Board’s Standing Committee on Transportation and Air Quality from 2011 to 2020. Notable publications include "Comparative life cycle water use assessment of diverse hydrogen production pathways" (Environmental Science & Technology, 2025), "Unlocking potential for low-carbon hydrogen production from U.S. natural gas resources" (Environmental Science & Technology, 2024), "Technological evolution of large-scale blue hydrogen production toward the U.S. Hydrogen Energy Earthshot" (Nature Communications, 2024), and "Understanding the complexity of existing fossil-fuel power plant decarbonization" (iScience, 2022).