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Research dossier · People & Ideas

Ying Zheng (engineer)

Chinese-Canadian chemical engineer

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 28, 2025
Entity authorityQ56646263 ↗
Source-derived summary

Ying Zheng is a Chinese and Canadian chemical engineer whose research topics include water treatment, biofuel production, the manufacture of catalysts, and the recycling of materials from spent electric batteries. She is a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at the University of Western Ontario (Western University), where she holds a tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Chemical Reaction and Intensification.

Education and career

Zheng is originally from China, the daughter of two engineers.

After a 1999 Ph.D. from Western University, Zheng became an assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of New Brunswick, where she was promoted to associate professor in 2004 and full professor in 2008. After a stint as a professor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland from 2015 to 2018, she joined Western University as a full professor in 2018. After holding the Canada Research Chair in Chemical Processes and Catalysis since 2017, she was given a tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Chemical Reactions and Intensification in 2021.

Recognition

Zheng was named as a Humboldt Fellow in 2007. She became a Fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada in 2014, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering in 2016, a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers in 2017, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2018, and a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada in 2022. She was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 2025.

Zheng received the Syncrude Canada Innovation Award in 2010, the Design and Industrial Practice Award of the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering in 2018, the Merit Award of The Federation of Chinese Canadian Professionals in 2022, and the Energy Systems Award of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2025.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Ying Zheng (engineer)” as chinese-Canadian chemical engineer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1999, 2004, 2008, 2015—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Ying, Zheng and engineer can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as chinese-Canadian chemical engineer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 28, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q56646263. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1999, 2004, 2008 and 2015.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Ying Zheng (engineer)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Ying Zheng (engineer) primary sources, Ying Zheng (engineer) archive and Ying research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ying Zheng (engineer)”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Ying Zheng (engineer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.