Professor Tianyi Ma

Tianyi Ma has multi-national, multi-university experience at several of the world’s top universities. He obtained his PhD from Nankai University, one of the top universities in China. He is now a Full Professor in the School of Science at RMIT University. He was awarded Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) in 2014 and ARC Future Fellow in 2021, both highly competitive fellowship schemes indicating his outstanding academic achievement. He was awarded Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) in 2021, which is a prestigious honour to those who must have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of chemical sciences. 

He is a world-leading scientist in renewable energy field, with pioneering work conducted in areas of functional photocatalytic, electrocatalytic, thermocatalytic and piezocatalytic materials for renewable solar, mechanical and thermal energy harvesting and utilisation, as well as carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS); these processes are further incorporated into his developed next-generation high-performance battery and supercapacitor based energy storage devices. He has published over 230 peer-reviewed journal papers (163 as the first or corresponding author, 126 with a journal impact factor > 10, 21 with a journal impact factor > 20, and 25 invited reviews) in top-tier journals such as Nature Communications, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Advanced Materials, totally attracting over 20,000 citations with an H-index of 63. The substantial impact is also evidenced by 34 of his papers being ranked as ESI Top 1% or 0.1% Highly Cited Papers, resulting in him being ranked as the Clarivate’s ESI Highly Cited Researcher in 2020 and 2021, standing among Top 1% of the global researchers.

He is not only a champion researcher, but also an exceptional research leader. He has supervised more than 30 PhD students with 12 completions, of which many students received research awards and scholarships at multiple levels. He is actively engaged in the organisation of international and domestic conferences and has given more than 30 invited talks. His professional leadership is also evidenced by the heavy engagement in academic roles including serving as the Associate Editor or Editorial Board Member for many journals such as Materials Reports: Energy, Rare Metals, and Journal of Electronic Materials; 6 themed issues were published by him as the leading guest editor.

He has secured over $6.2m funding as the chief investigator from ARC, Victoria Government, and industry partners to conduct innovation work, which is not only fundamentally significant but also shows far-reaching impact for industry. Via ARC Linkage Projects, CSIRO Collaboration Project, Government R&D Finding projects, as well as CRC-P and CCUS-Technology Project applications, he has established substantial collaboration with industry partners including GrapheneX, Loy Yang Electricity, Advanced Carbon Energy, CleanTech Energy Australia and PhosEnergy. The lab-scale renewable energy devices and systems were up-scaled to prototype demonstrations and pilot plants based on his game-changing functional materials and technologies. He plays a key role as the group leader, chief investigator and the critical initiator in securing these industry-directed funds.

He is now leading the Carbon Neutrality Group at RMIT, in the meantime collaborating with researchers from USA, UK, China, Japan, India, Saudi Arabia and others. He aims to combine aforementioned revolutionary technologies focusing on all sectors of the renewable energy supply chain to eventually achieve the global carbon neutrality.

Awards

• 2022 Australian Institute of Policy and Science - Tall Poppy Campaign Award
• 2021 Future Fellowship, Australian Research Council (ARC), Australia
• 2021 ESI Highly Cited Researchers - Top 1% in Cross-Field, Clarivate
• 2021 Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
• 2021 Emerging Investigator of Materials Horizons, Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
• 2020 ESI Highly Cited Researchers - Top 1% in Cross-Field, Clarivate
• 2020 Global Peer Review Award - Top 1% of Reviewers, Clarivate
• 2018 Emerging Investigator of Journal of Materials Chemistry, Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), UK
• 2014 Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), Australian Research Council (ARC), Australia
• 2012 TANG Auchin Chemistry Scholarship, Jilin University, China 
• 2010 YANG Shixian Scholarship, Nankai University, China

• 03/2022 – NOW Guest Editor, Nanomaterials
• 03/2022 – NOW Guest Editor, Chinese Journal of Catalysis 
• 07/2021 – NOW Editorial Board, Catalysts 
• 08/2020 – NOW Associate Editor, Materials Reports: Energy 
• 03/2020 – NOW Editorial Board, Rare Metals 
• 05/2020 – NOW Associate Editor, Journal of Electronic Materials 
• 01/2020 – 12/2020 Guest Editor, Nano Materials Science 
• 08/2019 – NOW Youth Editorial Board, Chinese Chemical Letters 
• 08/2019 – 08/2020 Guest Editor, Chemistry – An Asian Journal 
• 07/2019 – NOW Associate Editor, Frontiers in Chemistry 
• 06/2018 – NOW Editorial Board, American Journal of Environmental Sciences 
• 02/2017 – 02/2019 Lead Guest Editor, Catalysts 
• 05/2017 – NOW Editorial Board, General Chemistry
• 08/2015 – 12/2020 Community Board, Materials Horizons 
• 08/2015 – NOW Member of RSC 
• 07/2013 – 07/2016 Lead Guest Editor, International Journal of Photoenergy

• 2013    Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry, College of Chemistry, Nankai University, China
• 2008    B.Sc. in Chemical Science, College of Chemistry, Nankai University, China

Demonstration & Pilot Plant:

• Solar-to-H2 generator --- A module-based 100% solar energy driven photocatalytic hydrogen generator is designed to float on the surface of river and sea. The estimated cost including CAPAX and OPAX can reach an extremely low price of $3.7 to produce 1 kg H2. 
• Lithium-CO2 battery --- A 400 Wh kg-1 lithium-CO2 battery pack is tested by using the CO2 from heavy industry emission (e.g. coking plant, power plant) as the fuel to generate electricity. This demonstration project aims to achieve the large-scale energy storage and onsite CO2-to-electricity conversion. 
  
• CO2 electrolyser --- A pilot plant consisting of CO2 capture unit to separate the CO2 from industrial flue gas, 10 kW CO2 electrolyser unit to produce syngas, and methanol synthesis with a capacity of 6 ton per year is designed to realise CO2 upgrading to methanol via the CCU technology. 
  
• Formic acid production --- A micro-pilot plant with a 10 kg/day formic acid production capacity is designed to achieve the zero emission of the coking plant exhaust by converting it into hydrogen and formic acid as value-added fuels and chemicals.