Recently, the research team led by Prof. Hu Run, an ICARE Chinese supervisor from the School of Energy and Power Engineering, published a research paper entitled Macroscale Anomalous Heat Conduction in Active Thermal Metamaterials as a cover article in Newton, a prestigious international physics journal and a sister journal of Cell.

Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) is listed as the first completing institution. Dr. Wang Zhaochen, a doctoral candidate, is the first author of the paper, with Prof. Hu Run serving as the corresponding author. Prof. Luo Xiaobing and Prof. Qian Xin are included as co-authors.

Alongside the publication of the paper, Newton released a preview commentary entitled Macroscale Heat Conduction Gets an Anomalous Makeover, which highly praised the work, stating:

“The core finding of this work is both elegant and powerful.”
“This paper offers a refreshing and promising new direction.”
“It could be truly transformative, inspiring exciting new directions for both fundamental research and thermal engineering.”

(https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newton.2025.100289)

The research team led by Prof. Luo Xiaobing and Prof. Hu Run has long been dedicated to research in heat and mass transfer, thermal metamaterials and functional devices, and thermal management of optoelectronic devices. In recent years, they have published numerous papers in leading international journals, including Nature Communications, Science Advances, Physical Review X, Light: Science & Applications, Advanced Materials, Advanced Energy Materials, Materials Today, and ACS Nano.

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant Nos. 52422603, 92463311, 52161160332, 52411540235), among other projects.

Research Group Website:http://tpl.hust.edu.cn

DOI link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newton.2025.100255