Professor Xinhe Bao received his PhD in Physical Chemistry from Fudan University in 1987 and then worked as a Fellow of Alexander von Humboldt in Fritz-Haber institute of Max-Planck Society in Berlin/Germany. He became a full Professor of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (DICP, CAS) in China in 1995 and the group leader of Nano & Interface Catalysis at the State Key Laboratory of Catalysis later. He held the position of the institute director from 2000 to 2007. He was appointed the Executive Vice President Fudan University in 2015 and the President of University of Science and Technology of China since 2017.

Professor Bao is the member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the member of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) and the Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (Hon. FRSC). Bao is Editor-in-chief of Journal of Energy Chemistry (JEC, Elsevier), and a member of the editorial board or international advisory board of several scientific journals, including Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Energy & Environ. Sci., Chem. Sci., Surf. Sci. Report, ChemCatChem, ChemPhysChem, Surf. Sci. and etc.

Professor Bao is dedicated to nanocatalysis for efficient energy conversion processes. Starting from carbon nanotube-confined metal nanoparticles, Professor Bao and his team carried out systematically and introduced a new concept of “Nano-Confined Catalysis”. Based on that, they have developed a number of nano-confined catalysts and made significant contribution to the development of C1 chemistry, including direct methane conversion, syngas conversion and CO 2 electrocatalytic conversion to value-added chemicals. Because of his contribution, Professor Bao received a number of national and international scientific awards, including HLHL Award (Hong Kong, 2012), the International Award for Excellence in Natural Gas Conversion (2016) and Alwin Mittasch Prize of the German Catalysis Society (2017) and more recently the First prize of National Natural Science Award of China (2020).