Dr Mengnan Wang

Dr. Mengnan Wang is a Senior Lecturer in Engineering at the University of Exeter. She is a materials scientist with a multidisciplinary background in chemistry, chemical engineering, electrochemistry and materials science. Her research focuses on sustainable functional materials for electrochemical energy conversion and storage, with particular expertise in waste derived carbon materials, porous electrode structure, electrocatalysis, sodium ion batteries and electrochemical interfaces.

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 a 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 relevant evaluation to understand and engineer structure performance relationships. She has worked across fuel cells, electrolysers, nitrate reduction, CO₂ electrolysers and sodium ion batteries, with a strong focus on translating sustainable materials from fundamental design towards practical application.