Dr. Jie (Joe) Zhuang is a professor in Department of Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science, director of environmental and soil science graduate studies, and the lead of cluster hire initiative of climate-smart agriculture and forestry at the University of Tennessee (UT). He is also affiliated faculty of UT’s Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment. Dr. Zhuang has co-founded four international multidisciplinary research centers, more than ten international working groups, and one international graduate study program that have successfully recruited 40 doctoral students. He has organized or chaired over 40 international transdisciplinary workshops benefiting more than 6,000 researchers and students. He served on many national and international award committees as well as many review panels of national and international funding agencies. Over the past 25 years, Dr. Zhuang has worked on many challenging research projects in the United States, Japan, and China. He has rich research experiences in food-energy-water nexus, fate and transport of contaminants (e.g., virus, bacterium, organic chemicals, heavy metals, engineering nanoparticles, and nutrients), soil hydrology modeling, soil carbon-pore-water interactions, and crop-water relations. He has published over 150 refereed articles and book chapters and over 80 conference abstracts. Dr. Zhuang has given more than 40 invited talks worldwide. He has been the editor or editorial board member for 13 international journals and served over 60 international journals as ad hoc reviewer. Currently, Dr. Zhuang leads projects aiming to develop a global research center for climate-smart food-energy-water nexus, which involves researchers, students, stakeholders, and policymakers from over 20 countries. In teaching, he provides undergraduate and graduate students with transdisciplinary training for understanding the complexity and impacts of food-energy-water nexus on the environment and preparing high-quality dissertation proposals.