Sun Pengzhan, an assistant professor at the Institute of Applied Physics and Materials Engineering at the University of Macau (UM), has been named one of the 35 Innovators Under 35 for China by MIT Technology Review. The honour makes Sun the only scholar from Macao on the list.
According to the Review, the professor was selected for his work in the construction of and research into atomic-scale channels, as well as the application of the new membrane separation technology he has developed to make energy consumption more efficient.
Sun’s research findings have been published in leading scientific journals such as Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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He has also received multiple awards, including the Excellent Young Scientists Fund (Hong Kong and Macao) from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Grand Prize in the Tsinghua-Dow Sustainable Development Innovation Challenge Competition.
Since 1999, the Review has annually selected a group of academics under the age of 35 who are the most innovative and influential in the field of technology.
Over the past two decades, many of the winners have gone on to become industry leaders. They include Zhuang Xiaowei, a bio-imaging technology pioneer; Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google; JB Straubel, co-founder of Tesla; and Zhang Feng, the inventor of CRISPR gene editing technology.
