Zihao (Richard) Zhang joined UNT as an assistant professor in fall 2017 After working as a satellite thermal engineer at Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, Calif. He received his doctoral and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech and his bachelor’s from MIT.
 
Zhang’s research interests are in nanoscale heat transfer, nanomaterials and aerospace applications. He has published in a variety of applied physics and thermal-fluids journals, including Applied Physics Letters, ACS Photonics and Journal of Heat Transfer. Zhang is currently working with one doctoral student on the radiative and thermal conductive properties of topological insulators.
 
During the Summer of 2018, Zhang was at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M., researching the thermal properties of non-equilibrium low-dimensional bodies under ultra-fast irradiation. “The work has implications on ultra-sensitive visible light and infrared radiation sensors, and overall, may point toward identifying novel synthetic materials with extreme anisotropy and unusual thermal conductivity,” said Zhang.