At the invitation of the Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMR, CAS), Prof. Yulong Ding from the University of Birmingham, the 2026 Lee Hsun Lecture Award recipient, visited IMR from October 21 to 23.

During his visit, Prof. Ding delivered a lecture titled “Energy Storage for Clean Heating, Cooling & Foundation Industry Decarbonisation: Challenges & Recent Progress” to IMR researchers and graduate students. In his lecture, Prof. Ding first outlined the challenges and opportunities facing heating, cooling and industrial decarbonisation using detailed data, and emphasized the importance of energy storage—especially long-duration energy storage—in the transition to net-zero energy and industry. He then described how energy storage can help address these major challenges, introducing his team’s progress in using composite phase change materials (CPCMs) and thermochemical materials to decarbonise heating, cooling and the foundation industries. The talk covered fundamental material formulations, materials and module manufacturing, device and system integration, and examples of technology development and deployment. The in-depth and specific presentation sparked lively discussion among attendees.

Prof. Yulong Ding is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and the first Chamberlain Chair Professor in Chemical Engineering at the University of Birmingham. He is the founder of the Birmingham Centre for Energy Storage (BCES) and the Birmingham Industrial Decarbonisation Taskforce (BIDT). He is the inventor of liquid air energy storage technology and led its early development. He has developed composite phase change materials for thermal energy storage and their scalable manufacturing technologies, promoting large-scale commercial application; by 2025, the total installed capacity of related technologies had exceeded 1,000 MW/8,000 MWh. His research on passive cooling container technology has achieved large-scale commercial demonstration in the cold chain sector, with about 550 vehicles currently in operation. His work on CO₂ splitting based on perovskite materials led to the founding of PeroCycle Ltd. Prof. Ding has published more than 600 peer-reviewed papers (Google Scholar H-index >100) and applied for about 100 patents covering energy materials, devices and systems. He has received numerous awards, including the IChemE Clean Energy Medal (2021) and Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (2020).