Team Members

PI Biosketch: Dr. Haibo Zhai is a Full Professor of Environmental Engineering, the Roy & Caryl Cline Distinguished Chair in Engineering, and a Wyoming Excellence Chair at the University of Wyoming (UW). He is also an Adjunct Professor in the School of Energy Resources and the School of Computing at UW and in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He is a visiting scholar at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, for the autumn 2026 term. Prior to moving to UW, he was a research professor at CMU and also a key developer of the Integrated Environmental Control Model (IECM), a widely used power plant modeling tool developed for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. Now he is the Director for the IECM development. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors. He holds a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from North Carolina State University. 

Dr. Zhai has published numerous journal articles in energy & environmental science, technology, and policy, including about 30 articles in Environmental Science & Technology, Nature Communications, Nature Sustainability, and Nature Water. He is a lead author for the forthcoming 2027 IPCC Methodology Report on Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies, Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. His work on carbon capture and storage has been referenced in the U.S. national rulemaking for controlling power sector carbon dioxide emissions and in the IPCC sixth assessment report. He was recognized in 2019 as one of the top 10 most productive researchers in carbon capture (during 1997–2017) (Science of The Total Environment, 2019, 687:687-701) and is on the Stanford University list of the World's Top 2% Scientists.

Dr. Zhai has served as an ad-hoc reviewer for the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Oak Ridge Associated Universities, and numerous research funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation (U.S.), the U.S. Department of Energy, the Israeli Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology, the Dutch Research Council (Netherlands), the Knowledge Foundation (Sweden), and the National Science Centre (Poland). Currently, he serves on the advisory board of iScience and npj Environmental Social Sciences. He was an appointed member of the Transportation Research Board’s Standing Committee on Transportation and Air Quality (2011-2020). 

Principal Programmer: Karen Kietzke 

Postdoctoral Research Staff: Dr. Ayush Singh, Dr. Asad Ullah

PhD Students: Dengfeng Qin, Md Sharmon Hossain Arnob, Chengcheng Lyu

Former Lab Members at UW: Dr. Wanying Wu (PhD, Postdoc), Muhammad Sadiq, Dr. Zitao Wu (PhD, Postdoc), Md Sharmon Hossain Arnob (MS), Dr. Jeff Anderson, Dr. Huan Yang, Xiaohan Wu, Joanna Jarrell, Rayen Guermazi, Jonathan Kostelecky, Dr. Manish Maurya, Dr. Rania Farouq Abdou Salama, Dr. Abdallah Dindi, Landen Fuller, Abby Matthias, Tyler Camphouse