Yanchun Zhou holds a BSc in ceramics from Tsinghua University, and an M.S. in ceramics and Ph.D. in metals from Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was a visiting scientist at the Institute of Strength Physics and Materials, Russian Academy of Sciences, and a post doc at University of Missouri-Rolla in the 1990’s. He was Professor and Director of High-performance Ceramic Division, Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science before moving to Aerospace Research Institute of Materials and Processing Technology in 2010. He became a professor at Zhengzhou University since 2022.

    Zhou has discovered more than 20 new ternary carbides and nitrides. His current interests and fields of research are designing, understanding the structural-property relations of damage tolerant ceramics for high and ultrahigh temperature applications. He has published more than 500 papers in peer-reviewed international journals with citations ca 27100 times with H-index of 88.

    He has received numerous prizes and awards, and was elected Academician of the World Academy of Ceramics in 2009, Fellow of ACerS in 2010 and Academician of Asian-Pacific Academy of Materials in 2013. He served as a member of the Advisory Committee of WAC (2010-2014), and a member of the Nominating Committee of WAC (2010-2014), Chairman of the International Committee of the ECD-ACerS, Chair of Ross Coffin Purdy Award Committee of ACerS (2015). He also serves as Principle Editor of JMR, vice Editor-in-Chief of JMST, Editor of J. A. Ceram. Soc and J Adv Ceram. In 2024, he launched a new journal and serves as Editor-in-Chief.