Prof. Zibin Chen, Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), has been honoured with the FutureAM Breakthrough Award in recognition of his distinguished research in advanced manufacturing.
The FutureAM Breakthrough Award is presented annually to recognise outstanding mid-career researchers in advanced manufacturing who demonstrate growing recognition for their contributions. The award was presented during the 2nd International Conference on Future of AM 2026 in Singapore, one of the largest international communities in advanced manufacturing.
Prof. Chen’s primary research goal is to design sustainable materials that provide superior structural, functional and service properties, and to address practical engineering challenges across different material systems. His work on developing low-alloy, low-cost, and high-performance sustainable metal alloys, as well as record-breaking ferroelectric materials for energy storage and piezoelectric applications has attracted considerable attention worldwide. He has published numerous high-quality papers in top-tier journals such as Nature, Science, Nature Materials, Science Advances, Nature Communications, and Physical Review Letters.
Recently, Prof. Chen pioneered two innovative strategies for advancing cryogenic materials, including the "Negative-Curvature Interface" strategy and "hierarchical nano-orderings (HNOs)" architecture. These strategies have tackled the classic strength-ductility-toughness trade-off and achieved record-breaking performance among all reported cryogenic alloys to date. Both innovations have been published consecutively in Nature Communications.
In addition, he and his team have achieved a significant breakthrough in functional materials science, revealing and, for the first time, deliberately engineering microscopic “topological vortex” structures inside bulk piezoelectric crystals to dramatically boost their electromechanical performance. This groundbreaking discovery has been published in Nature Materials.
Learn more about Prof. Chen’s research achievement:
PolyU researchers collaboratively develop high-performance titanium alloys through additive manufacturing
