Prof. Dr. Gang Chen (Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, USA) has been awarded the prestigious Humboldt Research Award in 2025 by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
The prize is awarded to internationally leading researchers from abroad across all disciplines, in recognition of their academic record to date.
His research interests center on nanoscale thermal transport and energy conversion phenomena and their applications in energy storage and conversion, thermal management, and water treatment and desalination. He has made important contributions to the understanding of heat transfer in nanostructures and has exploited this understanding to develop energy conversion, storage, and water technologies. During his stay in Germany at the TUM Chair of Thermodynamics (Prof. Wen), he will work with Prof. Wen on a few fundamental aspects of nanoscale energy conversion that have confused the communities for a while, such as interfacial evaporation under light and heat, and ultrafast heat transfer at the nanoscale.