Prof. Zhou is part of the winning team of the DoD Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) Program in 2023. The title of the awarded project is "Planetary- and Geologically-Inspired Discovery of Refractory Materials". He and other five PIs from UVA and ASU aim to use planetary-inspired and geomimetic processes to design refractory materials that will outperform existing ones. See DoD press release.