On November 18, the opening ceremony of the 12th National Conference on Environmental Chemistry (NCEC) was held at the Wuhan International Expo Center.

The conference was organized by the Environmental Chemistry Committee of the Chinese Chemical Society (CCS) and the China University of Geosciences (Wuhan).

Hong CHEN, Associate Professor of the School of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), received the 2023 CCS Young Scientist Award in Environmental Chemistry at the event.

Hong CHEN joined SUSTech in 2018, and is also the Deputy Director of the Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Interfacial Science and Engineering of Materials and Head of the Chemistry Research Group on Low-Carbon Resource Utilization of Solid Waste and Pollution Control.

He is mainly engaged in the research on resource recycling and utilization of solid waste, as well as the design and development of new environmental materials and devices.

He has published 140 papers in renowned journals, with more than 8,400 citations, an H-index of 48, and is ranked among the Top 2% Scientists Worldwide by Stanford University. He has applied for more than 20 patents, five of which have been authorized.

Professor CHEN has presided over and participated in many projects by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

He has received several accolades, including the Young Scientist Award from the Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences and the Gold Award from the Guangdong Society of Environmental Sciences.

Additionally, he has served as an associate editor of Environmental Chemistry Letters, and an editorial board member of several other renowned journals, including Sustainable Horizons, Environmental Surfaces and Interfaces, Environmental Functional Materials, Industrial Water Treatment, Chinese Chemical Letters, and Chemical Engineering Journal Advances.

The NCEC is a bi-yearly conference that has been held on eleven occasions since 2002. It has become a highly influential academic conference in the field of environmental science research in China.

On this occasion, a total of 10 young scholars were awarded the CCS Young Scientist Award in Environmental Chemistry in recognition of their significant contributions to the field of environmental chemistry in the past few years.