At the invitation of the Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMR, CAS), Prof. Jochen M. Schneider, the 2025 Lee Hsun Lecture Award recipient, visited IMR from June 23 to 25, 2026.

On the morning of June 25, Prof. Schneider delivered a lecture titled "Coating materials design for harsh environments – Are protective coatings predictable?" to IMR researchers and graduate students.

In his presentation, Prof. Schneider discussed the need for predictive computational methods to design next-generation protective coating materials – an approach superior to traditional trialanderror methods. He outlined the key design criteria including synthesizability, mechanical properties, as well as thermal and chemical stability. The lecture explored the strengths, limitations and challenges of such predictive approaches, highlighting both successful experimental validations and cases where theoretical models have failed. He also discussed the implications of this computational approach for materials design, particularly in systems with complex structures and compositions.

The cutting-edge and in-depth lecture sparked keen interest and lively discussion among attendees. Researchers and students engaged in extensive exchanges with Prof. Schneider on key issues in predictive computational methods for protective coating materials. During his visit, Prof. Schneider also held academic discussions with researchers from the Ceramic Materials Division.

Prof. Jochen M. Schneider's research focuses on quantum-mechanically guided design of thin films with tunable thermal stability, chemical stability, and elasticity. In 2001, he received the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He was elected a Fellow of the American Vacuum Society in 2013, and a Fellow of both the Max Planck Society and RWTH Aachen University in 2015. In 2018, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the Leibniz Institute for Surface Engineering in Leipzig, and in 2019 he was appointed to the Strategic Facility Advisory Board of the Henry Royce Institute at the University of Manchester. He received the Bill Sproul Award from the Advanced Surface Engineering Division of the American Vacuum Society in 2020, and the Rudolf-Jaeckel Prize from the German Vacuum Society in 2022. In the same year, he was appointed to the Advisory Board of the Wallenberg Initiative for Materials Science for Sustainability at Linköping University. In 2023, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Faculty of Science and Technology at Uppsala University, Sweden. He also serves on the editorial boards of Scientific Reports and Surface and Coatings Technology, and on the editorial advisory board of Applied Surface Science Advances.