Dr Mengnan Wang

Dr Mengnan Wang is a Senior Lecturer in Engineering and a Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) Research Fellow at the University of Exeter. She has secured approximately £1 million in competitive research funding as Principal Investigator (PI). With a multidisciplinary background in chemistry, chemical engineering, electrochemistry and materials science, her research focuses on engineering sustainable materials and electrochemical interfaces for clean energy conversion, storage and chemical manufacturing. Her expertise spans electrocatalysis, electrochemical interface engineering, porous electrodes, waste-derived carbon materials and electrochemical energy technologies.

 

She obtained her PhD from Imperial College London in 2023, developing biomass-derived catalyst layers for proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Before joining Exeter, she was a Lecturer in Chemical Engineering at Swansea University from 2024 to 2026, where she was the inaugural academic of the Nanjing Tech University and Swansea University Joint Education Institute, leading curriculum development and international collaboration. She previously completed a BEng in Chemical Engineering and an MSc in Chemistry at the National University of Singapore between 2010 and 2015, and spent four years in technology translation and industry-focused research in Singapore and the UK from 2015 to 2019.

 

Her research combines materials synthesis, advanced characterisation, electrochemical testing and device engineering to understand and control structure–performance relationships. Her work spans CO₂ electrolysis, fuel cells, hydrogen technologies, nitrate reduction and sodium-ion batteries, with a particular emphasis on interface and microenvironment engineering. Her current RAEng Fellowship focuses on developing scalable acidic CO₂ electrolysers for sustainable chemical manufacturing, bridging fundamental materials research with practical electrochemical technologies.

 

Multiple PhD studentship opportunities are available or anticipated through the following funding routes:

 

I warmly welcome enquiries from motivated prospective PhD students interested in electrocatalysis, electrochemical engineering, sustainable energy materials and chemical manufacturing. I particularly encourage applications from candidates from underrepresented backgrounds.