LAUSR

10.1002/adma.201701082 This special issue, guest-edited by Prof. Liqiang Mai, Prof. Qingjie Zhang, and Prof. Ce-Wen Nan, celebrates the 30th Anniversary of State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing (ATMSP) and the 1st Anniversary of the International School of Materials Science and Engineering (ISMSE) at Wuhan University of Technology (WUT). This special issue is also dedicated to the memory of Prof. Runzhang Yuan (1934–2006), the co-founder of the State Key Laboratory of ATMSP, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of his death. WUT is located in Wuhan, the largest city in Central China and a famous Chinese “River City”; it has three campuses: the Mafangshan Campus (Figure 1), the South Lake Campus (Figure 2) and the Yujiatou Campus. WUT is one of the leading Chinese universities and one of the universities constructed in priority by the “State 211 Project” for Chinese higher education institutions; its Materials Science and Engineering entered the “State 985 Project” for world excellent disciplines. WUT was ranked 49th according to the Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings 2014 Top 100, and ranked 351–400 according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2014–2015. Currently, WUT has ca. 5510 staff members including 790 professors and 1391 associate professors; with 24 schools, 8 state key disciplines, 77 doctoral programs, 226 master’s programs, and 87 bachelor’s programs. Over 36 000 undergraduates, 12 000 postgraduates (including Master and Ph.D. students), and over 1200 international students are studying at WUT. Meanwhile, WUT has established cooperative relations for students’ exchange and scientific research with more than 100 foreign universities and research institutions from USA, UK, Japan, France, Australia, Russia, and The Netherlands, etc. and invited over 300 international famous scholars to be guest/honorary professors. As one of the renowned universities in China, WUT has become an important institution regarding research in materials science. More than 300 faculty members with over 2000 graduate students from several schools (including the School of Materials Science and Engineering, ISMSE, the School of Science, the School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Liqiang Mai received his Ph.D. degree from Wuhan University of Technology in 2004 and then carried out postdoctoral research in Prof. Zhonglin Wang’s group at Georgia Institute of Technology (2006–2007). Following this, he worked as an advanced research scholar in Prof. Charles M. Lieber’s group at Harvard University (2008–2011) and Prof. Peidong Yang’s group at University of California, Berkeley (2017). He is currently the Cheung Kong Scholar Chair Professor at Wuhan University of Technology. His research interests include nanowires, micro-/nanoenergy storage devices, and energy-based nano–bio interfaces.