The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has named Lei Zuo, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Energy Harvesting and Mechatronics Research Lab in Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering, as a Fellow of the ASME.

Fellowship is the highest elected grade of the society’s membership and can be conferred on people with at least 10 years of active engineering practice who have made significant contributions to the profession.

Zuo has won a 2015 R&D 100 Award for his innovation on ocean wave energy harvesting and a 2011 R&D 100 Award for his research on energy-harvesting shock absorbers. R&D recognizes the top 100 most significant technology innovations of the year around the world. Since 2014 he has received the ASME Thar Energy Design Award for pioneering research on energy harvesting, the Society of Automotive Engineers Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award, a P3 Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the ASME Best Paper Award on Structures and Structural Dynamics, and the Winner of the Best Technology Development of Energy Harvesting from Harvesting and Storage USA Conferences.

Zuo joined Virginia Tech in 2014 after six years at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and four years as a senior research scientist at Abbott Laboratories in Chicago. He has authored more than 130 research papers, over 40 of which have appeared in journals, and holds five U.S. patents. Zuo has received over $8M research grant ($7M as the PI) from institutions including the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Naval Research, state agencies, and industry.

He received his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering in 2005 and two master’s degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering in 2002 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 1997. 

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