Dr. CAO is broadly interested in industrial ecology and built environment stocks, with specific expertise in material flow analysis (MFA) and life cycle assessment (LCA). Over the past years, driven by the motivation to understand the interactions between the built environment and the natural environment, he developed industrial ecology tools to examine the techno-economic feasibility of implementing low-carbon and circular economy strategies in the built environment and identify technology and policy pathways that can enable sustainable transitions in material cycles closely tied with the built environment.

Dr. CAO is broadly interested in industrial ecology and built environment stocks, with specific expertise in material flow analysis (MFA) and life cycle assessment (LCA). Over the past years, driven by the motivation to understand the interactions between the built environment and the natural environment, he developed industrial ecology tools to examine the techno-economic feasibility of implementing low-carbon and circular economy strategies in the built environment and identify technology and policy pathways that can enable sustainable transitions in material cycles closely tied with the built environment.

Starting in mid-2023, Dr. CAO has assumed the position of Full Professor at Nankai University, Tianjin, China. Prior to his position at Nankai University, he served as a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Applied Engineering, University of Antwerp, Belgium. He started his postdoctoral training at the Center for Life Cycle Engineering at the University of Southern Denmark, Denmark, followed by a stint at the Energy and Resource Systems Analysis Laboratory at Northwestern University, United States. In 2017, he earned his PhD degree from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing). He also serves as a board member of the International Society for Industrial Ecology (IS4IE) and co-chair of the Socio-Economic Metabolism (SEM) section of the society.

In recent years, Dr. CAO has authored over 60 articles in top journals, including Nature Climate Change, Nature Sustainability, One Earth, Nature Communications, and Environmental Science & Technology. More details are available from his Google Scholar page (https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=Hj-kD_sAAAAJ&view_op=list_works).

More about Dr. Zhi CAO could be visited at his Personal Webpage and IDs:

1. Web of Science ResearcherID：N/A
2. Scopus Author ID:N/A
3. ResearchgateID：Zhi-Cao-9
4. ORCiD: 0000-0001-6120-0362
5. SciProfilesID: N/A

Dr. CAO could be contacted via email zhicao@nankai.edu.cn or zhicaoie@gmail.com.