Home» News» 【Muxing·Glory】Academician Chen Guang, Our Distinguished Alumnus, and His Team Win the 2026 Tan Kah Kee Science Award!

On February 12, the Chinese Academy of Sciences held a press conference in Beijing and announced the winners of the 2026 Tan Kah Kee Science Award and Tan Kah Kee Young Scientist Award. The project Principles, Technology and Application of Lightweight and Heat-Resistant TiAl Single Crystals for Aerospace Propulsion by the team led by alumnus Academician Chen Guang of our university won the Tan Kah Kee Award for Technological Sciences. A total of 6 Tan Kah Kee Science Award projects and 12 Tan Kah Kee Young Scientist Award recipients were selected this year.

The project Principles, Technology and Application of Lightweight and Heat-Resistant TiAl Single Crystals for Aerospace Propulsion focuses on the bottleneck materials challenge facing China’s aerospace propulsion equipment. It has revealed the formation mechanism of TiAl single crystals with parallel lamellar orientation and developed their growth technology, successfully solving two internationally recognized long-standing bottlenecks of TiAl alloys: high room-temperature brittleness and low long-term service temperature. This achievement has transformed China from a follower to a leader in this field, and remains unique in the world to date.

The Tan Kah Kee Science Award is named after Mr. Tan Kah Kee, a renowned patriotic overseas Chinese leader. Its predecessor was the Tan Kah Kee Award established in 1988. With the approval of the State Council in 2003, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Bank of China jointly founded the Tan Kah Kee Science Award Foundation and launched the Tan Kah Kee Science Award. It is designed to honor major original scientific and technological achievements recently made in China. The Tan Kah Kee Young Scientist Award was established in 2010 to recognize young scientists and technologists under the age of 40 who have independently achieved important original scientific and technological outcomes in China.

Chen Guang is a materials scientist, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a National Excellent Teacher, recipient of the National May 1st Labor Medal and the First National Innovation Excellence Award, and an expert enjoying special government allowances from the State Council. He currently serves as Director of the State Key Laboratory of High-Temperature Light Alloys and Applied Technology, Vice Chairman of the Materials Teaching Steering Committee of Higher Education Institutions, Strategic Consultant and Expert of the National Science and Technology Major Project on R&D and Application of Key New Materials, Member of the National Expert Advisory Committee for New Materials Industry Development, Chief Editor of the Series of Textbooks for General Higher Education in New Materials, and Deputy to the 14th People’s Congress of Jiangsu Province.

In March 1982, Chen Guang graduated from Hebei Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering with a bachelor’s degree and joined the faculty. He received his Master of Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 1989 and his Doctor of Engineering from Northwestern Polytechnical University in 1999. He was promoted to Professor at Hebei Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering in 1996, and selected for the second level of the Hebei Provincial “Double-Ten, Double-Hundred, Double-Thousand Talent Project” in 1997.

Academician Chen Guang’s research focuses on metallic materials and processing science and technology. He has made important and innovative contributions to basic research and engineering applications in lightweight and heat-resistant intermetallic compounds, directional solidification of superalloys, amorphous composites, iron and steel materials and processing. He proposed the academic concept of full-process controlled directional solidification, discovered unique phenomena in directional solidification, and established the principle of crystallographic orientation control via directional solid-state phase transformation. He invented a crystal growth method based on the synergistic control of liquid-solid and solid-solid phase transformations, breaking through the limitation of traditional directional solidification techniques that only control liquid-solid phase transformation. This method effectively regulates the final crystal orientation of materials with complex solid-state phase transformations after solidification, achieving an excellent combination and leapfrog improvement of strength, ductility and high-temperature endurance properties.

His research achievements were selected among the Top 10 Advances in National Defense Science and Technology 2021. He has received one Second Class Prize of the State Technological Invention Award, one Gold Medal and two Excellent Prizes of the China and World Intellectual Property Organization Patent Award, two Second Class Prizes of the National Teaching Achievement Award, one Second Class Prize of the National Textbook Construction Award, and seven First Class Prizes of Provincial and Ministerial Science and Technology Awards. He has published more than 200 academic papers, authored 6 monographs and textbooks, and been granted 98 domestic and international invention patents.