Prof Liqun Zhang, received his PhD degree in 1995 from Beijing University of Chemical Technology of China. He was Visiting Scholar at University of Akron in 1999-2000, and Postdoctoral Fellow at Case Western Reserve University in 2000-2001. He was appointed as a Cheung Kong Scholar by Ministry of Education of China in 2005 and received the Distinguished Young Scientist Foundation from NSFC in 2007. He has been very active in the field of rubber science and technology for over 24 leading the Center of Advanced Elastomer Materials, which holds a leading position in China in the field of rubber science and technology and possesses an internationally well recognized fame as well. He is also the head of the Key Lab. of Beijing City on Preparation and Processing of Novel Polymer Materials and associate head of the State Key Laboratory of Organic-Inorganic Composites, China. He serves as an editorial board member of 3 international scientific journals and 9 Chinese scientific journals.

His current research interests include (I) preparation and processing of advanced and novel rubber nanocomposites, (II) description of complex structures and the relationship between multi-scale structures and performance of rubber composites by advanced simulation methodology and instruments, (III) design, synthesis and processing of new generation of biobased engineering elastomers, (IV) dynamic vulcanization and thermoplastic elastomers. He has published over 295 international papers and is a (co-)author of 8 books (chapters). He has given over 60 plenary/keynote/invited lectures in international conferences and has chaired many sessions in international conferences and 4 times co-chaired international conferences. He has filed 130 Chinese patents and 3 international ones, of which nearly 100 have already approved. He has received many highly reputed scientific awards from scientific associations/societies, the Ministry and Committee of China including prestigious “9th China Youth Scientific Award”, “China University Distinguished Youth Teacher Award”, “Award for Scientific and Technological Innovation of Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation”, “Guanghua Engineering Science and Technology Award”, and “National Invention Award”. In 2012, he received Spark-Thomas Award from ACS Rubber Division and Asia Research Award from the Society of Chemical Engineering of Japan, for his important contributions to rubber science and technology.