Zhi CAO is a professor and doctoral supervisor at the College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nankai University. He has been selected for the national-level Young Talents Program and Hundred Young Discipline Leaders Program of Nankai University. His research mainly focuses on industrial ecology, material flow analysis, life cycle assessment, environmental systems analysis, and climate resilience. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Previously, he holds a tenure-track assistant professor position at the University of Antwerp, and has conducted research at Northwestern University in the United States and the University of Southern Denmark. He has published papers in top-tier journals in the field of resource and environment, including Nature Climate Change, Nature Sustainability, Nature Communications, and Environmental Science & Technology. His research findings have been directly used and cited by international organizations such as the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).