Success for the first global conference on Chinese materials!

Before the conference opened, the Rector of UNamur met with His Excellency the Chinese Ambassador to Belgium, Mr. Shengchao Fei, Prof. Bao Lian Su, and representatives of the conference organizing committee, including the former president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Prof. Chunli Bai, the former vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Prof. Tao Zhang, and the first vice president of Beijing University, Prof. Jin Zhang. The discussion provided an opportunity to explore avenues for future collaboration between the two universities.

The opening ceremony of this first edition, on the theme of "The Frontiers of Materials in the Age of Artificial Intelligence," featured speeches by the Rector and His Excellency the Chinese Ambassador to Belgium.

Energy, environmental issues, and healthcare are among the top priorities of modern society.

These issues have sparked phenomenal interest in materials, as they hold great promise for the development of new, cutting-edge devices and equipment that are revolutionizing our way of life. Materials play a key role in our daily lives and in the development of our society.

Artificial intelligence is now part of our daily lives. It will certainly accelerate the discovery of new materials and possible applications, and will revolutionize our lives and scientific research.

The GCMC2025 conference featured 16 plenary sessions, 12 keynote speeches, and 100 invited lectures given by eminent scientists, as well as numerous other oral presentations and poster sessions proposed by participants from more than 20 different countries and regions, covering a wide range of topics, including: 

• Energy and catalysis: challenges and solutions for greener chemistry
• Functional materials, with interdisciplinary forums combining chemistry, physics, and computer science
• New materials and their new properties
• The integration of machine learning into the design processes for new materials
• Bio-inspired materials
• Bio-inspired smart sensors
• AI in the service of materials science and engineering

This conference also hosted five special events: 

• The 1st Global Forum for Young Chinese Talents Abroad, which brought together more than 50 young researchers of Chinese origin selected from a large number of candidates from around the world according to very high standards.
• the Forum on Metallic and Composite Materials,
• the Interdisciplinary Forum on Materials,
• the Science China Press Forum,
• the Forum on Chemical Synthesis - OAE Publishing.

• Honorary President: Prof. Chunli Bai: Academician and former President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
• Prof. Bao-Lian Su, University of Namur, Belgium, and Wuhan University of Technology, China
• Prof. Max Gao-Qing Lu, University of Wollongong, Australia
• Prof. Qing-Jie Zhang, Wuhan University of Technology, China

Prof. Bao-Lian Su is a member of the Functional Structured Materials (FSM) cluster at the Namur Institute of Structured Matter (NISM) and the Nanomaterials Chemistry Unit (UCNano) of the Department of Chemistry, which brings together the Applied Materials Chemistry (CMA) and Inorganic Materials Chemistry (CMI) laboratories, of which he is the Director. 

He has been president of the International Mesostructured Materials Association (IMMA) since 2021 and is the first Belgian to have received this honor.  He is also a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium (FRAB), the European Academy of Sciences (FEurASc), the Royal Society of Chemistry, United Kingdom (FRSc), a life member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, honorary member of the Chinese Chemical Society (HFCCS), foreign member of the Chinese Society for Chemical Industry and Engineering (FFCIESC), and holds a Francqui Chair in Belgium.

Prof. Su has created a new family of mesoporous materials recognized by the scientific community as "CMI." This is a family of mesoporous materials based on silica and metal oxides synthesized from a highly innovative "polyoxyethylene alkyl ether" surfactant under very mild conditions.  

Prof. Su's team was the first to use this type of surfactant as a mesoporous structure directing agent. The team has also pioneered the field of hierarchical porous materials by discovering the formation phenomenon that led to the creation of a new family of hierarchical porous materials with three or four different interconnected pore sizes incorporated into a single solid material. Currently, this new family of materials constitutes a new area of research of great interest in the field of energy conversion and storage (batteries and photocatalysis) but also in the field of CO2 capture and utilization through catalysis. 

The organizers would like to express their gratitude to the session chairs and various committees who contributed to the organization of this event. They also thank the participants for the high standard of research presented. 

The organizers would also like to thank their sponsors: Wuhan University of Technology, Foshan Xianhu Laboratory, the University of Namur and the Namur Institute of Structured Matter (NISM), the F.R.S.–FNRS, Interdisciplinary Materials, the Guangdong Academician Federation, Kingfa, Chemical Synthesis, Science China Press (SCP), and Beijing Huaerda Science and Technology Co., Ltd.