International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 53 (2010) 813–814

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International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhmt

In Memoriam

Professor Xiaofeng Peng (1961–2009)

It is with great sadness that we note the passing of our friend andcolleague, Professor Xiaofeng Peng of Tsinghua University, Beijing,
China. Professor Peng passed away, after a sudden and brief illness,on the morning of September 10, 2009, in Beijing, at age 48. He is survived by his wife, Xuewen Fu, and his daughter, Yizhu Peng.
Professor Peng was a renowned scholar and educator, and at thepeak of his career. He was the Chang Jiang Endowed Chair Profesdoi:10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2009.11.017

sor and the former Head of the Department of Thermal Engineering
at Tsinghua University. He served on the editorial boards of various
international and regional scientiﬁc journals, including International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer and International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer, International Journal of Transport
Phenomena, Experimental Heat Transfer, Heat Transfer Asian
Research, and a number of Chinese journals including Chinese

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In Memoriam / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 53 (2010) 813–814

Journal of Engineering Thermophysics. He also served on numerous
Chinese and international technical committees, and has been
instrumental in fostering research collaborations in heat and masstransfer between Tsinghua University and many other universities
and research institutions around the world.
Born on May 6, 1961, Professor Peng obtained his Bachelor’s degree in 1983 and Doctorate with honors in 1987 under the supervision of Professor Bu-Xuan Wang, both from the Department ofThermal Engineering at Tsinghua University. He worked at Tsinghua University all through his career, as Lecturer (1987–1991),
Associate Professor (1991–1995) and Professor (1995–2009). He
served as Department Head from 1997 to 2002, and received theChang Jiang Endowed Chair (a national professorship in China
awarded by the Ministry of Education) in 2001. As Department
Head, Professor Peng facilitated an unprecedented growth inresearch. Professor Peng was a strong advocate for collaborative
research between China and the rest of the world. He held multiple
visiting professorships, and engaged in active collaborations withnumerous research institutions in China, USA, France and Korea.
In the short 22 years of his professional career, Professor Pengmade far-reaching contributions in heat and mass transfer. His research spanned phase-change heat transfer and two-phase ﬂows,interfacial transport phenomena, convective ﬂow boiling, heatand mass transport in porous media, microscale heat transfer,and heat transfer under microgravity conditions. The ‘‘Peng andWang” papers from the early 1990s are synonymous with earlymicrochannel heat transfer research. One of his papers, ‘‘Convective Heat Transfer and Flow Friction for Water Flow in Microchannel Structures,” published in this journal (vol. 39, 1996), has been
cited over 200 times, and has been recognized as being among
the seminal papers on the subject. Professor Peng then successfully
expanded his research spectrum to a broader range of topics inheat and mass transport, with original experimental and theoretical studies of bubble dynamics in pool and ﬂow boiling, heat andmass transport in saturated and unsaturated porous media, andinterfacial dynamics at the liquid–solid–vapor tri-phase region.
More recently, Professor Peng turned his attention to the studyof super-insulating nanoporous materials. He formulated atheoretical framework for understanding the heat transportmechanisms in such materials by considering coupled electron–phonon–molecule–photon interactions. Professor Peng authoredor co-authored over 600 articles in peer-reviewed journals andconference proceedings covering a wide range of topics including
thermodynamics, heat transfer, and thermal engineering, whichhave been widely cited.
His outstanding research accomplishments won him many
prestigious national honors, such as the Science and Technology
Research Award (1989), National Natural Science Award (1990),
Award for Research Achievement (1996), First Prize Award for Natural Scientiﬁc Research Achievement (2005). Professor Peng was
invited to deliver plenary presentations at many international conferences, including the 10th and 11th International Heat Transfer
Conferences (1994, 1998), Boiling 2000 – Phenomena & Emerging
Applications (2000), the 3rd International Conference on Coolingand Heating Technology (2007) and the 18th International Symposium on Transport Phenomena (2007). In addition to his fundamental research, Professor Peng devoted a signiﬁcant amount of
his efforts to transferring technical knowledge to industrial technologies. Many of the new technologies developed by Professor
Peng have been adopted by leading energy industries in China.
One example is the vapor–liquid separator he developed for condensers in HVAC applications, which could increase energy efﬁciency by 30% compared to currently used equipment.

An even greater legacy than his impressive research achievements, however, is Professor Peng’s overwhelming contribution
in his role as educator and mentor to students. He came to be beloved by a large cohort of students who consider themselves fortunate to have studied with him. They remember his care andattention to their lives and research, sometimes even at the expense of time spent with his family. Professor Peng always seemedat his happiest when spending time with his students. At Tsinghua
University, he was well known for his high academic and professional standards as well as his openness to new ideas from youngstudents. He initiated and promoted the Undergraduate Research
Program in the Department and encouraged many talented students to explore scientiﬁc research early in their educational experience. Professor Peng supervised over 33 M.S. and 19 Ph.D.
graduates and countless undergraduate students. Incredibly, hisPh.D. students won the prestigious Tsinghua Excellent Doctoral
Dissertation Award in three consecutive years (2003, 2004 and2005). The best testament to his inﬂuence on his students andhis broad impact on the world is the number of his students who
now hold academic positions at prominent universities and research institutions in China and around the world. Professor Peng
received the National Gold Award for Teaching from the Bao-Gang
Education Foundation in 2001.
In the many notes of remembrance and condolence that havepoured in since his passing, Professor Peng uniformly evokes memories of hard work, creativity and enthusiasm, modesty, generosityand kindness, and a philosophical desire for the pursuit of knowledge, and its lasting impact on his students, colleagues and friends.
The energy and passion with which he pursued his research reﬂected an impatience and anxiety about how much there was to
do and how little time was available (far too short, as it turnedout).
Well, dear friend, you did accomplish much – now, rest inpeace. Your memories and legacy will live on within many.
We recognize that words, however kind, cannot mend theheartache his family must feel, but those of us who care and sharetheir loss wish them comfort and peace of mind and hope that they
may ﬁnd strength in the love of family and in the warm embrace offriends.
Suresh V. Garimella
R. Eugene and Susie E. Goodson Professor,
School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, 585 Purdue Mall,West Lafayette, IN 47907-2088, USA
Tel.: +1 765 494 5621
E-mail address: sureshg@purdue.edu
W.J. Minkowycz
James P. Hartnett Professor of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Illinois at Chicago, 842 West Taylor Street,
2049 ERF, Chicago, IL 60607, USA
G.P. ‘‘Bud” PetersonPresident, Georgia Institute of Technology,
225 North Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30332, USADimos Poulikakos
Laboratory of Thermodynamics in Emerging Technologies ML J 36,ETH Zurich Sonneggstrasse 3, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland
Bu-Xuan Wang
Institute for Thermal Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University,Beijing, 100084, China
Available online 2 December 2009