HZB-postdoc Feng Liang becomes associate Professor at Xi'an Jiaotong University

Dr. Feng Liang has joined the HZB Institute Solar Fuels in 2021. Now, he has secured an associate professorship at the Green Hydrogen Innovation Center in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, China. He will start to build up his research team in June 2025.

Dr. Feng Liang has earned a PhD in mechanical engineering from Xi'an Jiaotong University, China, in a joint training programme with RWTH Aachen. In October 2021, he joined the Institute Solar Fuels on a Helmholtz-Innovation Pool project. He is developing cutting-edge prototypes for water-splitting devices that can operate at higher than ambient pressures up to 8 bar.

The design of functioning prototypes demands skills from different disciplines, not only device engineering but as well a deep understanding of materials science and electrochemistry. “I learned most of the electrochemistry here from Fatwa Abdi and Roel van de Krol”, Liang says. “They were the best mentors I could ever imagine”.

Feng Liang has secured an associate professorship at the Department of Mechanical Engineering in Xi'an Jiaotong University. He will leave HZB after helping his colleagues prepare for the "programme oriented funding" evaluation in May.

“From June 2025, I will start my own group in China, and I'm excited about the prospect of a close partnership with HZB in the future”, he says. Liang will continue his work on prototypes for water splitting. Roel van de Krol, director of the Institute for Solar Fuels, praised Feng Liang's achievement, saying: “It's wonderful to see that his work at HZB has led to an associate professorship; it's a great example of how HZB provides a supportive environment for early-career researchers to develop their careers”.