After fierce competition and strict screening procedures, Professor Li Xiaogang of the Institute for Advanced Materials Technology of our university won the 2019 W. R. Whitney Award from the National Association of Corrosion Engineers (NACE International). NACE International is the world's largest academic organization of materials corrosion and protection, founded in 1947. The W. R. Whitney Award is its highest academic award. It mainly rewards scholars who have made significant contributions to the theory of corrosion science and corrosion-resistant materials. One award is awarded each year globally. Since 1947, it has been obtained by the most well-known scholars in the field of material corrosion and protection.

The award speech to Professor Li Xiaogang has been published on the NACE International website: Professor Li has made outstanding contributions to corrosion science and engineering, especially his long-term research on the basic theory of corrosion of steels and the metallurgical control technology of corrosion-resistant steels. An important achievement, his work systematically clarified the influence of alloy composition, microstructure and metallurgical process parameters on the origin and evolution of steel environmental corrosion. To facilitate the understanding of complex corrosion processes and the design of advanced corrosion-resistant materials, he has also developed the corrosion big data approach by full life-cycle exposure experiments, laboratory accelerated experiments, high-throughput corrosion and environmental monitoring, and corrosion modeling and simulation.

Professor Li Xiaogang is a member of the International Corrosion Council. According to news, in October 2018, Professor Li was invited to serve as an advisory editorial board member of Corrosion Science by Elsevier Publishing Group, which is a top international metallurgical professional journal with an impact factor of 5.24. In total, five top experts from around the world were hired as advisory editorial board members to grasp its direction of running the journal. Professor Li is the only Chinese professor. Professor Zhang Dawei of our school is one of the three deputy editors of the journal. These positions and awards of scholars of our school in international academic journals and international academic organizations indicate that our school's research on material corrosion and new corrosion- resistant materials has become one of the best in the world.