Prof. Jimmy C. Yu from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), the 2025 Lee Hsun Lecture Award recipient, visited the Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMR, CAS), from September 21 to 22, 2025.
During his visit, Prof. Yu delivered an academic lecture titled "Photocatalytic Materials for Sustainable Development" for IMR researchers and graduate students. In his lecture, Prof. Yu presented research advancements in both metal-based and non-metal-based photocatalysts, while sharing valuable insights from his team’s experiences inphotocatalytic technology.
Prof. Yu also held in-depth discussions with researchers from the Divison of Solar Energy and Hydrogen Energy Materials.
Prof. Jimmy C. Yu served as Master of United College, Wei Lun Professor of Chemistry, and Chairman of the Department of Chemistry at CUHK, in addition to contributing as a member of the Natural Science Panel of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council.
Born in Fujian and educated in Hong Kong, Prof. Yu completed his undergraduate studies at Saint Martin's University (1980) before earning a Ph.D. from the University of Idaho (1985). Remarkably, he began his academic career as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at University of Puget Sound in 1984 before completing his doctorate.
Since joining CUHK in 1993 as a visiting scholar to establish the environmental science research direction, Prof. Yu formally returned to Hong Kong in 1995 to pioneer a photocatalytic research laboratory. He has published over 400 papers in prestigious journals including Nature Communications, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Angewandte Chemie International Edition, with nearing 70,000 citations. He also holds multiple photocatalytic materials patents. His notable honors include the Second Prize of the State Natural Science Award in 2005 and the Changjiang Scholar Chair Professor title in 2009, among others.
Prof. Yu's transformative work spans titanium dioxide solid solutions, surface fluorination, mesoporous structures, and red phosphorus photocatalytic materials, providing new avenues for the development of advanced photocatalytic materials. His team’s nano-titanium dioxide-based coating technology has been widely applied in air purification and high-end water treatment, significantly advancing the industrialization of photocatalytic technology.
Since 2011, Prof. Yu has maintained a strong collaborative partnership with IMR's Prof. LIU Gang's research team, fostering significant academic exchanges and joint research initiatives.
Prof. Jimmy C. Yu delivers a lecture. (Image by IMR)
