Tao Gao is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at NC State, where he leads the SuPER Lab. He founded the lab in August 2020 at the University of Utah before moving to NC State in July 2026. Gao has led research as PI spanning fundamental work (including an NSF CAREER award) and applied research supported by DOE, DoD and industry sponsors. He has published over 85 peer-reviewed papers — including in Science, Nature Communications, and the Journal of the American Chemical Society — and given 30+ invited talks at ECS, ACS, MRS, and AIChE meetings and peer universities. He has mentored 12 graduate students, 4 postdocs, 27 undergraduate researchers, 6 high-school students and 3 visiting scholars; alumni have gone on to PhD programs and industry roles at Micron, Joby Aviation, NuNa, Onto and Element Energy.