Zhangping Wei
Assistant Professor
Dr. Zhangping Wei is an Assistant Professor of Coastal Engineering in the Department of Physics and Physical Oceanography at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW). Dr. Wei teaches foundational and advanced engineering courses for UNCW’s Bachelor of Science Coastal Engineering program. Dr. Wei’s current research focuses on improving the understanding of coastal storms’ impact on coastal communities and infrastructure, and machine learning applications in coastal engineering. His work applies computer-based approaches such as coastal modeling and machine learning.
Dr. Wei has been a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) in Water Resources and Environmental Engineering since 2019. Before joining UNCW, Dr. Wei was a Coastal Engineer at two engineering companies, where he provided coastal modeling and coastal structure design support to address coastal resilience issues along the Gulf Coast and Atlantic Coast. In addition, Dr. Wei conducted post-doctoral research in coastal engineering at Johns Hopkins University, where he developed advanced computational tools to improve the understanding of nearshore processes driven by breaking waves and wave-structure interaction.
Education
Ph.D. in Engineering Science (Computational Hydroscience), University of Mississippi.
M.E. in Hydraulics & River Mechanics, Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute.
B.E. in Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University.
Research Interests
Coastal infrastructure resilience
Machine learning application in coastal engineering
Nearshore processes
Renewable ocean energy
Wave-structure interaction