A Voyage Intersecting Nano, Heat, and Energy: Professor Gang Chen's Scientific Contributions

Abstract

Professor Gang Chen turns 60 this year. He has made seminal contributions to nanoscale heat transfer and energy sciences in his career spanning over three decades. He has achieved both fundamental progresses and technological advancements with a profound impact on the scientific community and society at large. He is also a prolific educator, having mentored over 100 graduate students and postdocs, many of whom now occupy research and teaching positions in top institutions around the world. With this Special Issue in the Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, we celebrate Professor Gang Chen's multi-faceted contribution to science and the scientific community by compiling research papers reporting recent progress by former members of his group, including one by Professor Chen himself.

This Editorial briefly reviews Professor Gang Chen's scientific contributions in five main areas: (1) Nondiffusive phonon transport; (2) Nanostructured thermoelectrics; (3) Nanoscale thermal radiation; (4) Thermal transport in polymers; (5) Solar-photovoltaic-thermal energy engineering. By no means do we attempt to cover the entire scope of research documented in Gang's more than 400 journal publications. Instead, we discuss his representative works and summarize their scientific significance within a broader context, including a survey of the impact of these original results on defining new frontiers in each area.