Zinc-based batteries have found applications in devices ranging from hearing aid to grid-scale batteries, due to their superior safety, high energy and low cost compared to Li-ion counterpart. However, zinc-based batteries, particularly zinc anodes, historically suffer from poor rechargeability. Since the launch of my lab at Georgia Tech in January 2017, we have focused on developing tools to uncover the important information about battery materials, as well as engineering battery materials at the nanoscale to solve their intrinsic problems. In this talk, I will present our recent progress in designing nanostructured materials to mitigate the reversibility problem of zinc anodes. Next, I will show our in-operando visualization of liquid product formation and dynamics in Zn-Br stationary battery. Finally, I will show examples of applying the above two research approaches in other battery systems.