Education

Academic Degrees

• Ph.D., Materials, Imperial College London, 2011
• M. Eng, Materials, Tsinghua University, 2008
• B. Eng, Materials, Tsinghua University, 2006

Areas of Research and Professional Interest

• Materials for extreme environments: high-entropy ceramics, high-entropy alloys, ultra-high temperature ceramics, ODS alloys, MAX phases. 
• Advanced Manufacturing: laser additive manufacturing, selective laser sintering, laser shock peening, spark plasma sintering. 
• Corrosion: stress corrosion cracking, high-temperature oxidation.
• Irradiation damage: irradiation defects, irradiation-assisted stress corrosion cracking
• Microstructural characterizations: in-situ TEM deformation, irradiation, heating, and electrical experiements

About Bai Cui

Bai leads the Materials for Extreme Environments Laboratory at UNL. Bai’s lab uses transformative concepts, such as ‘high-entropy’ (i.e., ‘compositionally complex’ or ‘multi-principal component’) and other composition and microstructure design (e.g., oxide dispersion strengthening) concepts, to develop new metal and ceramic materials for extreme environments in the next-generation energy systems, which can survive high temperature, corrosive and irradiation environments. His team is a leading research group of high-entropy materials. He published one of the first two papers on high-entropy carbides in 2018, which becomes a highly cited article in the Journal of American Ceramic Society. It was also the first team to investigate the irradiation damage mechanism of high entropy carbides, reporting their high irradiation resistance in Acta Materialia in 2020.     

Bai's team is also actively developing novel technologies of laser processes for material processing, including laser additive manufacturing and laser shock peening (LSP). His team develops a unique selective laser sintering (SLS) process for additive manufacturing of ceramic materials, and LSP to improve mechanical properties of ceramic materials as well as irradiation and stress corrosion cracking resistance of stainless steels.  

Bai received his Ph.D. from Imperial College London, UK (advisor: Prof. Bill Lee), and was a Postdoc at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (advisor: Prof. Ian Robertson). 

Honors and Awards

Global Ambassador Award, American Ceramic Society, 2023. 

Global Star Award, Engineering Ceramics Division, American Ceramic Society, 2022. 

Faculty Research & Creative Activity Award, UNL College of Engineering, 2021

Journal of the American Ceramic Society’s top cited article, 2020-2021. 

International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing: outstanding contribution during 2020.

Journal of the American Ceramic Society’s top cited article, 2018-2019.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Faculty Development Grant, 2018 .

Honoree of College of Engineering Research Celebration, UNL, 2018, 2020.  

Richard Brook Prize for Best PhD in Ceramics in the UK, 2012 

Guastv Eirich Award, European Centre for Refractories, 2012

Tony Evans Prize for Best Ceramics Thesis, Imperial College London, 2012

Lee Family Scholarship, Imperial College London, 2008-2011

Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award, Tsinghua University, 2008