Dr. Chao Zhang is a professor in the School of Civil Aviation, at Northwestern Polytechnical University (Xi'an, China). He obtained his Ph.D. degree from The University of Akron, USA in 2013 and then went on to work as a postdoctoral fellow at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory from 2014 to 2016. He joined NPU in 2016. Dr. Zhang has more than 10 years' research experience working on the mechanics of composites for aerospace and energy applications, with a specific focus on textile composites and multi-scale modeling methods.