Aiping Yu is a chemical engineer and professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada, where she holds a University Research Chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering. Her research covers nanomaterials, graphene, energy storage and polymer composites. She received the E. W. R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship in 2020 and the Rutherford Memorial Medal in Chemistry from the Royal Society of Canada in 2022.
Education and early career Yu studied chemical engineering at Nanjing University of Technology and earned a master's degree in the same field from East China University of Science and Technology in 2002. She completed a PhD in chemical and environmental engineering at the University of California, Riverside in 2008.
She worked as a research scientist in the plastics industry before joining the University of Waterloo's Department of Chemical Engineering in 2009.
Research Yu directs the Applied Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory at Waterloo. Her group works on the synthesis and processing of carbon nanotubes, graphene and other two-dimensional materials, and on using them in supercapacitors and in lithium-ion, sodium-ion and zinc-ion batteries. Her work also includes nanomaterials for polymer composites, solar cells and sensors.
In 2016 her group received an NSERC Strategic Partnership Grant to work with Canadian companies on graphene-fibre supercapacitors for wearable electronics. Another line of her research has looked at graphene-based polymer coatings for oil pipelines.
Awards 2020 – E. W. R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship, awarded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada 2022 – Rutherford Memorial Medal in Chemistry, Royal Society of Canada 2023 – Canada's Most Powerful Women: Top 100, BMO STEM category, Women's Executive Network 2025 – Fellow, Canadian Academy of Engineering
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