Six Scholars from Tianjin Chengjian University Ranked World's Top 2% Scientists List 2025

Recently, the team led by John P.A. Ioannidis from Stanford University of the United States released the latest edition of the World's Top 2% Scientists List. Professor Wang Zhongliang, President of Tianjin Chengjian University (TCU), Professor Chen Zhihua, TCU Vice President, and Professor Liu Zhifeng, Dean of TCU School of Materials Science and Engineering, were included in the "Career-long Impact" list. Professor Chen Zhihua, Professor Liu Zhifeng, Professor Yang Bin, Dean of TCU School of Energy and Safety Engineering, Professor Zhang Xinbo, Vice Dean of TCU School of Environmental and Municipal Engineering, and Associate Professor Li Yifan of TCU School of Energy and Safety Engineering were selected for the "Single-year Impact" list. Their work spans five subfields: Civil Engineering, Materials, Environmental Sciences, Building & Construction, and Mechanical Engineering & Transports.

Among them, Chen Zhihua, Liu Zhifeng, and Yang Bin have been listed for six consecutive years, while Zhang Xinbo has been selected four times in the past five years. So far, including other scholars such as Liu Zhongxian, Guo Zhengang, and Zhang Bo, a total of nine scholars from our university have been included on this list.

Introduction to Scholars Selected for the World's Top 2% Scientists List 2025

Wang Zhongliang, Ph.D., Professor, President of Tianjin Chengjian University, and Doctoral Supervisor at the Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has been recognized as an expert receiving special government allowances from the State Council, selected as an Outstanding Talent of the New Century by the Ministry of Education, and named as a Leading Scientific and Technological Talent among Middle-aged and Young Professionals in Tianjin. His honors include National Outstanding Geographical Science and Technology Worker Award, Tianjin May Day Labor Medal, Tianjin Natural Science Award, and Tianjin Teaching Achievement Award. He serves as a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), member of the Central Committee of the China Democratic League, Vice Chairperson of the Tianjin Committee of the China Democratic League, Vice Chairperson of the Population, Resources, Environment, and Construction Committee of the Tianjin CPPCC, and Chairperson of the Tianjin Urban Science Research Association. He has previously held positions including member of the Teaching Guidance Committee of the Ministry of Education, Chairperson of the Tianjin Geographical Society, and editor-in-chief or editorial board member of several academic journals. He has long been dedicated to research in the fields of regional water resources and ecological environment changes, having conducted more than 20 major and key national and provincial-level research projects, and published over 300 academic papers and works.

Chen Zhihua, Ph.D., Vice President of Tianjin Chengjian University, Second-Level Professor, Chair Professor, and Doctoral Supervisor at Tianjin University. He has been recognized as a winner for the national Hundred, Thousand, and Ten Thousand Talents Project, a Tianjin Outstanding Talent, an Outstanding Jinmen Scholar, and an expert receiving special government allowances from the State Council. He serves as a Standing Committee Member of the Tianjin Association for Science and Technology, an advisor for National Excellent Doctoral Dissertations, and was honored as one of the first Outstanding Talents in China's Steel Structure Industry. He was awarded the Commemorative Medal for the 70th Anniversary of the Founding of the People's Republic of China. He served as the Chief Expert for the National Key Research and Development Program during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period and was the lead for a "973 Program" project. As the Principal Investigator, he has won the Second Prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award and eight First Prizes of Provincial/Ministerial Science and Technology Progress Awards. He has been consistently listed in the "World's Top 2% Scientists" and the "Elsevier Highly Cited Chinese Researchers" lists. His research achievements have been applied in over a hundred large-scale infrastructure projects, including the venues for the 13th National Games, various key projects at the Tianjin Cultural Center, and the National Convention and Exhibition Center (Tianjin).

Liu Zhifeng, Ph.D., Professor, Dean of the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Tianjin Chengjian University, and Director of the Tianjin Key Laboratory of Green Functional Building Materials. He has been awarded the Tianjin Outstanding Young Scholars Fund, Tier-1 Tianjin "131 Talent Project", Leading Young Technological Innovation Talent in Tianjin, and Tianjin Higher Education "Discipline Leader Training Project", among other honors. He serves as Director of the Test Technology Branch of the Chinese Ceramic Society, Supervisor of the Tianjin Ceramic Society, and an editorial board member of journals such as Advanced Powder Materials and the Journal of Tianjin Chengjian University. He has conducted more than 30 research projects, including those funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. As the first author or corresponding author, he has published over 260 high-quality papers, including 29 ESI highly cited papers (7 of which are hot papers), with total citations exceeding 11,000 and an h-index of 58. He has authored one textbook and two academic monographs, applied for more than 50 Chinese national invention patents, and as the Principal Investigator, received two Second Prizes and two Third Prizes of the Tianjin Science and Technology Progress Award, as well as one Third Prize of the Tianjin Natural Science Award.

Yang Bin, Ph.D., Second-Level Professor, Dean of the School of Energy and Safety Engineering at Tianjin Chengjian University, and Doctoral Supervisor. He is a national high-level overseas talent introduced from overseas and a Tenured Professor at Umeå University, Sweden. His primary research focuses on building indoor environment and energy efficiency, ventilation and airflow organization, new HVAC technologies, and building intelligence. He has conducted more than 10 international and domestic government or institution-funded research projects, including 5 at the national level and 2 at the provincial/ministerial level; published over 200 papers; received more than 10 important awards; and published 3 academic monographs in both Chinese and English. He holds over 30 patents, including 10 U.S. patents. He serves as Associate Editor of the international journal Frontiers in Indoor Environment and is an editorial board member of several renowned academic journals such as Indoor and Built Environment, as well as Vice Chairperson of a national-level industry association. He has been invited multiple times to deliver featured speeches at world-renowned universities and research institutions, including the University of Southern California (USA), the University of Alberta (Canada), the European Union HVAC Society, Tsinghua University, Harbin Institute of Technology, and Tongji University. He acts as a review expert for the National Major Talent Program Foreign Expert Project of the Organization Department of the Central Committee, a peer review expert for the Swedish National Natural Science Foundation, and a peer review expert for the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation. As a representative of the scientific and technological community, he attended the review ceremony for the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China and received a commemorative medal. His awards include the Best Paper Award from the journal Building and Environment, the National HVAC Outstanding Youth Award, the First Prize of Huaxia Construction Science and Technology Award, the Young Scientist Award from the European Union HVAC Society, and the Ralph G. Nevins Physiology and Human Environment Award from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). He has been consecutively listed in the "World's Top 2% Scientists" for six years since 2020.

Zhang Xinbo, Ph.D., Professor, Vice Dean of the School of Environmental and Municipal Engineering at Tianjin Chengjian University, and Graduate Supervisor. She is the Head of the Municipal-Level First-Class Discipline in Environmental Science and Engineering, Director of National First-Class Course “Integrated Process Simulation Experiment for Ultrapure Water Preparation in the Chip Manufacturing Industry”, Team Leader of the Course “Water Environmental Pollution Control and Resource Recovery”, recipient of the Tianjin Young and Middle-Aged Talent Program, a Tier-2 winner for the Tianjin "131 Talent Project", a Tianjin Outstanding Young Graduate Supervisor, Member of the Water Treatment and Reuse Professional Committee of the Chinese Society for Environmental Science, Council Member of the Beijing Membrane Society, Committee Member of the Tianjin Sustainable Development Research Association, Member of the IWA China Young Water Professionals Committee, a Lifetime Member of the International Bioprocessing Association (IBA), an Editorial Board Member of the SCI Q1 Journal Chemical Engineering Journal and the CSCD Journal Industrial Water Treatment, and Reviewer for several international academic journals such as Water Research and Bioresource Technology. She was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Technology Sydney from 2014 to 2015 and at the University of Science and Technology of China from 2021 to 2022. Her research primarily focuses on the enhanced removal of emerging pollutants from water environment, the resource-oriented treatment of wastewater and sewage, the resource utilization of biomass solid waste, and technologies for removing small-molecule organic compounds from reclaimed water. She has conducted and participated in 17 national and provincial-level research projects, as well as numerous enterprise-funded projects. She has published over 100 papers in journals such as Chemical Engineering Journal, Journal of Membrane Science, and Bioresource Technology, including 5 ESI highly cited papers, and has contributed to 5 English academic monographs. Her H-index is 36, with over 4,400 citations (based on Web of Science).

Li Yifan, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Graduate Supervisor. She has been selected as a Tier-3 winner for the Tianjin "131 Talent Project" and for the Tianjin Higher Education "Young Backup Talent Training Plan." She is a member of the Chinese Society of Engineering Thermophysics and a member of the Chinese Association of Refrigeration. Her primary research focuses on heat dissipation in high-power electronic devices, microchannel liquid cooling technology, data center thermal management, and multiphase flow and phase change heat transfer. Her has conducted one Young Scientists Fund project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and one Technological Innovation Guidance Special Project from the Tianjin Science and Technology Bureau. She has participated in two General Program projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, completed one General Natural Science Project from the Tianjin Municipal Education Commission, and several industry-funded projects. She has guided students to win one second prize in a national competition and five second prizes in provincial/ministerial-level competitions. She has published over 30 SCI papers in internationally renowned academic journals (with over 1,200 citations and one ESI Highly Cited Paper).

The World's Top 2% Scientists list is internationally recognized as one of the authoritative assessments in the global academic community. It comprises two main parts: the "Career-long Impact" list and the "Single-year Impact" list. From a global pool of nearly 7 million scientists, it selects the world's top 2% researchers based on comprehensive parameters such as citation counts, H-index, co-author-adjusted HM-index, and citations to papers where they are the sole or first author. The list covers 22 major fields and 174 subfields. The "Career-long Impact" list assesses the cumulative impact throughout a scientist's entire academic career, while the "Single-year Impact" list highlights their academic performance in the previous year.

The inclusion of multiple scholars in the World's Top 2% Scientists list demonstrates the significant international influence and academic prestige of our university's researchers in the key disciplines. It reflects their important contributions to serving national strategic needs and industry development, earning attention and recognition from the global academic community. This achievement also fully reflects the profound accumulation in technological innovation and featured research in urban construction for the past few years, marking a new breakthrough for our university in global scientific research.