Humboldt Research Award for Visiting Researcher Lei Jiang

16. November 2017

The highly respected Chinese chemist Lei Jiang has been awarded one of the prestigious Humboldt Research Awards, which comes with € 60,000. The prize merits his extraordinary accomplishments as a scientist and his influential role in Asian materials chemistry. Furthermore it allows him to strengthen and deepen his relationships with the German science system. Therefore Jiang will closely cooperate with colleagues at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPICI) in Potsdam.

Lei Jiang’s broad range of research areas is widely recognized and very actual in terms of direct spin-offs for society. His main achievement is synthesizing and designing superwettable and super-repelling interfacial material systems: It ranges from primary work on the self-cleaning mechanisms of lotus leaves, the directional water transportation found on the peristome surface (2D) in the pitchers of certain carnivorous plants to mimicking the structures to develop also technical passive fluid-transport systems for practical applications.

The design and generation of surfaces bio-inspired nanochannels links him closely with projects of the MPI-CI. These nanochannels enable novel bioinspired energy conversion systems to harvest the so called “blue energy” i.e. the use of osmotic dilution of salts to generate electricity.

Lei Jiang always promoted the application of his fundamental research to real life problems e.g. using the superwetting for devices for energy generation, decentral water purification (without pumps), or for instance water collection nets for desert places. His work contributes directly to the “renaissance” of colloid and interface chemistry. The special combination of biomimetic approaches with modern nanostructure synthesis can be considered as one of the most rewarding fields in actual science.

Humboldt Research Award

The award is granted in recognition of a researcher's entire achievements to date to academics whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future.