# Hong-Cai (Joe) Zhou

Hong-Cai (Joe) Zhou (周宏才; born c. 1964) is a Chinese–American chemist and academic. He is the Davidson Professor of Science and Robert A. Welch Chair in Chemistry at Texas A&M University. He is currently the Deputy Editor of ACS Materials Letters. He is also the associate editor of the journal Inorganic Chemistry.

## Early life and education

Zhou gained admission to Beijing Normal University at the age of 16 and, after receiving his bachelor's degree, took up a position as a lecturer there, teaching introductory chemical engineering classes. In 1996, at the age of 32, he stepped down from his position and chose to go abroad to pursue further studies. Zhou earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Texas A&M University in 2000, studying under F. Albert Cotton. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University with Richard H. Holm.

## Career

In 2002, Zhou joined the faculty at Miami University. He won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2005 and received tenure in 2007. In 2008, Zhou moved to Texas A&M University. In 2014, he was promoted to Davidson Professor of Science and became a joint holder of the Davidson Chair in Science. He also holds a Welch Chair in Chemistry.

## Professional work

Zhou's research group focuses on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with over 350 publications in peer-reviewed journals, including more than 150 in high-impact journals such as Nature Chemistry, Nature Communications, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Angewandte Chemie. Since 2008, the number of citations of his work has increased exponentially, reaching annual citations of over 8,643 in 2020 and total citations of around 57,171, with an h-index of 105. Since 2013, he has served as an associate editor of the ACS journal Inorganic Chemistry.
Zhou has invented a toolkit for the manipulation of the self-assembly of porous materials from coordination hollow cages to predesigned, extended networks full of hierarchical cavities, bearing various functional groups on the internal surface. These porous structures with hierarchical porosity and programmed sequences of functional groups are in high demand for the creation of ordered architectures that can channel mass and energy flow, critical for catalysis, energy harvesting/storage, and information processing.
Zhou is a trailblazer in synthetic inorganic chemistry, coining the term "Pore Engineering". His research focuses on the design, preparation, and application of framework materials such as hollow coordination cages, MOFs, and porous polymer networks. He is best known for introducing a variety of tools to control the structure, porosity, and functionality of framework materials. Some of his seminal contributions include "bridging-ligand substitution", "ligand-fragment co-assembly", "kinetic analysis and tuning", "linker installation", "linker labilization", "cluster and linker metalation", "linker migration", "domino lattice rearrangement", and "retrosynthetic design". These contributions form the aforementioned "toolkit" for MOF synthesis, enabling the preparation and functionalization of MOFs for a wide range of applications, especially in gas storage, separation, catalysis, biomedicine, and degradation of recalcitrant pollutants. Recently, he expanded this MOF toolkit into the modular design of hierarchically porous MOFs, MOF hybrids, MOF superstructures, and MOF-polymer composites, forming the basis of "Pore Engineering".
The essence of "Pore Engineering" involves controlling the assembly procedure of frameworks, leveraging the tunable lability of coordination and dynamic covalent bonds, to create functionalized hierarchical structures from microporous to mesoporous levels and beyond.
In the MOF research community, Zhou is recognized as an international leader. He served as a guest editor (with co-editors Jeffrey Long and Omar Yaghi) for the first Chem. Rev. thematic issue on Metal-Organic Frameworks in 2012. This important volume in MOF research served as a catalyst for the maturation of the MOF field. He co-edited a themed issue for Chem. Soc. Rev. (with co-editor Susumu Kitagawa) in 2014. In 2008, he co-organized (with organizer Wenbin Lin) an ACS Symposium: Metal-Organic Frameworks: What Are They Good for? In 2013, he organized (with co-organizer Wenbin Lin) another ACS Symposium, Metal-Organic Frameworks: Where Do We Stand? These two symposia brought in a record number of attendees and stimulated new research ideas and activities in the MOF community. In 2016, he gave a webinar on MOFs for Gas Storage, organized by the Editorial Board of Chem. In 2018, he co-organized (with organizer Shengqian Ma and co-organizer Wenbin Lin) the third ACS MOF Symposium, Metal-Organic Frameworks: What Are Next?

## Honors and awards

His awards include a Research Innovation Award from the Research Corporation in 2003, an NSF CAREER Award in 2005, and a Cottrell Scholar Award from the Research Corporation in 2005. He received the 2006 Miami University Distinguished Scholar-Young Investigator Award, the 2007 Faculty Excellence Award from Air Products, and the 2010 DOE Hydrogen Program Special Recognition Award as a main contributor to the Hydrogen Sorption Center of Excellence. In 2014, he was awarded a JSPS Invitation Fellowship. In 2017, he received the Association of Former Students of Texas A&M University Distinguished Achievement Award in Research. Since 2014, he has been listed annually as a "Highly Cited Researcher" by Clarivate Analytics (formerly Thomson Reuters). He was elected a fellow of the AAAS, ACS, and RSC, respectively.