Keynote Speakers

Zhong-Zhen Yu

Professor, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, China

Zhong-Zhen Yu is a Professor at the College of Materials Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, and serves as Director of the Beijing Key Laboratory of Advanced Functional Polymer Composite Materials. His research focuses on polymer composites and nanomaterials, with particular interests in electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding, photothermal conversion, and advanced energy-related functional materials.

For more than 35 years, he is actively involved in research in the area of solar energy and particularly in flat plate and concentrating collectors, solar water heating, solar steam generating systems, desalination, photovoltaics, geothermal energy and absorption cooling.

Professor Yu has made pioneering contributions to functional materials science. In 2024, he proposed the theory of insulating electromagnetic shielding structures, overcoming the long-standing limitation that electrically insulating materials cannot efficiently shield electromagnetic waves. This breakthrough work was published in Science. In the field of energy materials, his team developed a light-responsive phase-change system with a photothermal conversion efficiency of 89.4%, enabling continuous energy supply across day-night cycles (Advanced Functional Materials, 2025). They also designed a sponge-like hydrogel for high-efficiency seawater desalination, achieving an evaporation rate of 5.50 kg·m⁻²·h⁻¹ (Small, 2025).

Professor Yu has published over 410 peer-reviewed papers, with more than 40,000 citations and an H-index of 106. He is a recipient of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars of China (2011) and the Polymer Science Innovation Award of the Chinese Chemical Society (2015).

Christian Breyer

Professor, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland

Christian Breyer is Professor for Solar Economy at LUT University, Finland. His major expertise is the integrated research of technological and economic characteristics of renewable energy systems specialising in energy system modeling for 100% renewable energy, on a local but also global scale. His team published the most studies on 100% renewable energy systems for countries or major regions globally. Energy system transition studies are carried out in full hourly and high geo-spatial resolution.

Publications cover integrated sector analyses with power, heat, transport, desalination, industry and negative CO2 emission options. Power-to-X investigations is a core research field for his team. He published more than 400 scientific papers, thereof more than 200 in scientific journals. As of March 2024 he has 216 Scopus listed publications, received more than 13000 citations (Scopus) with an h-index of 64 (Scopus) and more than 21500 citations (Google Scholar) and an h-index of 77 (Google Scholar).

He worked previously for Reiner Lemoine Institut, Berlin, and Q-Cells (now: Hanwha Q Cells). He is member of ETIP PV, IEA-PVPS, national IPCC working group in Finland, scientific committee of the EU PVSEC and IRES, scientific advisory board of CO2 Value Europe, academic council of Global Alliance Powerfuels, chairman for renewable energy at the Energy Watch Group, reviewer for the IPCC and a co-founder of the Desertec Foundation. His academic background is general business, physics and energy systems engineering and a PhD in electrical engineering. He communicates in Bluesky and Twitter @ChristianOnRE.