On October 9, 2024, the 17th “Wu Chung-Hua Award Fund” winners were announced. Professor Huahua Xiao from the State Key Laboratory of Fire Science at our university was honored with the “Wu Chung-Hua Outstanding Young Scholar Award”.

Professor Huahua Xiao has long been engaged in the research on flame dynamics, high-order CFD simulation, and hydrogen safety. He discovered a novel flame phenomenon called “blue whirl” and a new phenomenon of the premixed flame instabilities named “distorted tulip flames”, and then elucidated the formation mechanisms of these two phenomena; he quantified the deflagration-to-detonation transition mechanism induced by shock-flame interactions, and established a predictive model for hydrogen/air flame acceleration and detonation transition; and he independently developed high-efficiency and high-order CFD techniques and software solving multi-scale gas phase combustion and explosion. His related achievements have been published in over 50 SCI papers in journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, Combustion and Flame, Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, and Fire Safety Journal. These achievements have been positively reported by more than 50 authoritative international institutions/media such as the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the Combustion Institute, and the New York Times. His PNAS paper was rated one of the top 20 most influential scientific papers in the world for 2016 by the American Physical Society. He has led more than ten scientific projects, including the National High-Level Talents Recruitment Program for Young Professionals (with excellent final assessment), programs of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, projects of the National Key Research and Development Program of China, and key projects of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has served as an editorial board member/guest editor for several journals, and as co-chair, session chair, and program committee member for multiple international and domestic conferences, giving more than ten plenary lectures at international symposiums. He has received multiple awards, including the Young Scientist Award for Public Safety Science and Technology, and has been selected into the Elsevier “Top 2% Scientists in the World” list continuously since 2022.

The “Wu Chung-Hua Award Fund” was established in 2007—on the occasion of Mr. Wu Chung-Hua’s 90th birthday. Mr. Wu Chung-Hua, the founder of the discipline of engineering thermophysics in China, has successively established the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Chinese Society of Engineering Thermophysics. The “Wu Chung-Hua Award Fund” was initiated by the Chinese Society of Engineering Thermophysics and the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, with the aim of promoting the patriotic, dedicated, and striving spirit of Mr. Wu Chung-Hua, advancing the development of the discipline of engineering thermophysics, and Awarding outstanding young scientists and graduate students across China who have made remarkable scientific achievements and demonstrated innovative thinking in the field of engineering thermophysics. The fund offers two types of awards: the “Wu Chung-Hua Outstanding Young Scholar Award” and the “Wu Chung-Hua Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award”. The “Wu Chung-Hua Outstanding Young Scholar Award” Awards 1-6 domestic scholars annually who are under 40 years old, hold senior professional titles, exhibit innovative spirit and have made exceptional scientific achievements in the field of engineering thermophysics. To date, five scholars from our university have received this award, including Professor Fei Qi from the National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (2008, first session), Professor Naian Liu (2013, sixth session) and Professor Jie Ji (2019, twelfth session) from the State Key Laboratory of Fire Science, and Professor Guiqiang Li from the School of Engineering Science (2023, sixteenth session).