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Professor Jiawei ZHOU, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering under the Faculty of Engineering at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), has been honoured with the 2026 Croucher Tak Wah Mak Innovation Award for his groundbreaking research in thermal management.

Established to support exceptional early-career scientists in Hong Kong, the Croucher Innovation Awards recognise researchers who demonstrate outstanding potential and a strong, internationally competitive track record. Each award provides a generous grant of HK$5 million to enable recipients to pursue innovative scientific endeavours.

“It is a tremendous source of encouragement for my team,” said Professor Zhou. “This recognition gives us the confidence to undertake ambitious, long-term original research and focus on the most fundamental and essential scientific challenges in micro- and nanoscale energy transport”.

As electronic devices grow more powerful and energy efficiency becomes increasingly paramount, thermal management has emerged as a critical scientific and engineering challenge. Leveraging advanced computational and experimental techniques, Professor Zhou’s research explores heat transfer mechanisms across diverse materials to develop innovative solutions for electronics, batteries, data centers, and sustainable architecture. His work transcends conventional paradigms by investigating not only phonons—the atomic vibrations responsible for heat conduction in solids—but also electrons and molecules as alternative heat carriers.

Professor Zhou explained, “We focus on developing new materials with extreme thermal transport properties at the micro- and nanoscale while exploring active strategies to control heat flow. Our research aims to predict, discover and develop new materials that approach or even exceed current benchmarks for heat conduction and insulation.”

Potential applications of these new materials include enhancing performance of mobile devices and improving cooling efficiency in large data centres powering AI technologies, and contributing to greener, safer energy solutions.

Professor Zhou concluded, “Our goal is to engineer entirely new materials capable of pushing the limits of heat control, and find ways to integrate them into real-world devices for a more sustainable future.”

Biography of Professor Jiawei Zhou
Professor Jiawei ZHOU is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the University of Hong Kong. Zhou obtained his BSc degree from Tsien Hsue-shen Elite Class in Mechanics at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and then moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to carry out PhD research. He received the Wunsch Foundation Silent Hoist and Crane Award for Outstanding Graduate Research at MIT. He subsequently carried out postdoctoral research at Stanford University in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. His group’s research includes exploration of energy transport physics, thermal management, and nanomaterials for clean energy and sustainability.
More information about the research group of Professor Jiawei Zhou:
https://www.jwzhoulab.com/

More information about the Croucher Innovation Awards:
https://croucher.org.hk/en/funding/research-fellowships/croucher-tak-wah-mak-innovation-awards

For media enquiries, please contact:
Faculty of Engineering, HKU
Ms Christina Chung (Tel: 3910 3324; Email: chungmc@hku.hk)
Ms Natalie Yuen (Tel: 3917 1924; Email: natyuen@hku.hk)