Yuntian Zhu - Biography#

Chair Professor, City University of Hong Kong

Yuntian Zhu joined the City University of Hong Kong as a Chair Professor in 2020, before which he was an Associate Professor, Professor and Distinguished Professor in North Carolina State University from 2007 to 2020. He worked as a postdoc, staff member and team leader in Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) until 2007 after obtaining his Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1994.

In recent years his research is focused on the deformation mechanisms at dislocation level and mechanical behaviors of heterostructured materials and nano/ultrafine-grained materials. He is an experimentalist with a primary interest in the fundamental aspects of materials research and also in designing materials with superior strength and ductility. He and his colleagues are pioneers of the emerging field of heterostructured materials (HSMs) with unprecedented mechanical properties that are not accessible to conventional homogeneous materials. The biggest advantage of HSMs is their easy production using current industrial facilities at large-scale and low cost, which paves the way for their commercial applications. This field has now become a major materials research field. Two Fortune Global 500 companies are currently commercializing the HSMs.

He has published over 450 peer-reviewed papers, which have been collectively cited for over 55,000 times with an h-index of 121 according to Google Scholar; and for over 45,000 times with an h-index of 112 according to Scopus as of May 27, 2023.

He was recently elected to the US National Academy of Inventors, and also elected to the Fellows of five academic societies: TMS, MRS, APS, ASM, and AAAS. He has received numerous awards, including the Institute of Metals Lecture and Robert Franklin Mehl Award (a pinnacle TMS award), ASM International Albert Sauveur Award, the IUMRS Sômiya Award, TMS SMD Distinguished Scientist/Engineer Award, and TMS Leadership Award.

He is one of the two founding Editor-in-Chiefs for Materials Research Letters, which is the top # 1 communication journal in the field of structural materials, in terms of ISI Impact Factor (8.516) and Scopus Citescore (13.6).

More information can be found in his group website: http://www.hsm-lab.com