Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral research associate in Materials Science and Engineering Department at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his B.E. in thermal engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (Wuhan, China) in 2008 and Ph. D. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Colorado at Boulder in 2013. He was honored Outstanding Dissertation Award by College of Engineering at CU-Boulder in 2013. His research interests include atomistic simulation and ultrafast-laser characterization of thermal transport, thermal energy conversion and storage, thermal management of microelectronics, and nanoscale thermal transport phenomena in advanced materials.