Professor Samuel Mao is the Senior Director of Masdar Institute and a Professor of Practice in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Khalifa University. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and began his career as a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He later held the position of adjunct professor and director of the Clean Energy Engineering Laboratory at UC Berkeley. Additionally, he is an honorary professor at the University of Queensland in Australia, and the honorary founding director of the Institute of New Energy at North China Electric Power University.
Prof. Mao has authored over 160 refereed journal articles and holds more than 80 patents globally. His work, cited over 45,000 times according to Google Scholar, focuses on sustainable energy technologies and advanced functional materials. He introduced the concept of "disorder-engineering" for developing high-efficiency nanocrystal photocatalysts and led the team that created the world’s first hybrid electric heavy-duty trucks. He has delivered more than 100 invited talks at international conferences and universities, and contributed extensively to the U.S. Department of Energy as a technical committee member and research reviewer.
He has co-chaired major conferences, including the Materials Research Society annual meeting and the International Conference on Clean Energy. Prof. Mao is a recipient of the prestigious "R&D 100" Award for clean technology innovation and has received the UC Berkeley MEGSC faculty teaching award for his commitment to education.
