Professor Zhongchao Tan received his BSc and MSc degrees from Tsinghua University, Beijing in the 1990s, and PhD degree from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA in 2004. From 2004 to 2010, he was appointed to the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Calgary, Canada, where he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2009. From 2010 to 2023, he was a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering and as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada, attaining the rank of Full Professor in 2015. He was the founding Executive Director of Tsinghua-Waterloo Joint Research Centre for Energy and Environmental Technologies, and the Associate Dean (International) of Waterloo Engineering. Professor Zhongchao Tan’s impact on his peer groups and the wider society is also evidenced by numerous domestic and international awards, including Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering, Outstanding Performance Award (UWaterloo), Early Research Excellence Award (UCalgary), Editor’s Choice papers, Highly Cited Paper (top 1%) from Clarivate Analytics, and Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Tsinghua University. His dedication to higher education also won him multiple teaching awards, including those from UIUC and UCalgary.