Concurrent with his role as Vice-President and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Global) (Interim), Professor Xiaobo Yin also holds the position of Chair Professor of Sustainability Technology in the Faculty of Engineering.

Professor Yin earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Physics from Nanjing University in 1998 and 2001, respectively, and obtained his PhD from Stanford University in 2008. Prior to joining HKU, he served at the University of Colorado Boulder from 2013 to 2021, where he was an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and Physics, then Associate Professor with tenure. He was also named the Bruce S. Anderson Faculty Fellow of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Earlier in his career, he held positions as Research Assistant Professor at the Stanford Photonics Research Center and the University of California, Berkeley, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Professor Yin has an outstanding research record, with over 100 journal articles that have accumulated more than 30,000 citations. He is a Fellow of Optica and the SPIE. His honours include the Kavli Foundation Early Career Lectureship in Materials Science, the Moore Inventor Fellowship from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Xplorer Prize from the New Cornerstone Foundation.

Professor Yin’s research spans both fundamental and applied science. Currently, his work focuses on understanding energy–matter interactions across multiple spatial and temporal scales under extreme conditions, while developing scalable and sustainable manufacturing technologies for innovative materials and structures within the climate– water–energy–food nexus. His research has attracted international recognition; notably, his work on passive radiative cooling was named one of the “Top Ten Breakthroughs of 2017” by the Institute of Physics (IOP), and his contributions have been widely reported in international media.