Prof. Xinyan Huang is an Associate Professor in Building Environment and Energy Engineering at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He received his PhD from Imperial College London and completed postdoctoral training at University of California, Berkeley. He has co-authored over 200 journal papers on smoldering dynamics, wildland fire, microgravity combustion, battery safety, and AI-powered fire resilience. He is an Associate Editor of Proceedings of the Combustion Institute and receives the Bernard Lewis Fellowship, the Early Career Award from International Association of Fire Safety Science and International Association of Wildland Fire, and NSFC Excellent Young Scientists Fund. He has incubated two start-ups, WideMount Dynamics for firefighting robots and GABES for intelligent fire service systems.

"I am incredibly thrilled and honored to receive the 2026 Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award. I am grateful to my mentors, colleagues, and collaborators, who have shaped my career. I also dedicate this award to my current and past students and postdocs who always create brilliant ideas and challenge hard questions through their innovative thinking and hard work. Finally, I would like to thank NSFC, RGC, ITC, and PolyU for supporting my research and team over the last decade."

Matteo Pelucchi is Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. He earned his Ph.D. in Industrial Chemistry and Chemical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, with research experience at Argonne National Laboratory and the National University of Ireland Galway. His research focuses on chemical kinetics modeling of complex reactive systems, ranging from fundamental to chemical reaction engineering approaches. He has contributed to widely adopted mechanisms for pyrolysis and combustion (CRECK model) and has recently extended consolidated methodologies developed in combustion science to applications including hydrogen production and carbon materials synthesis, as well as chemical recycling of plastic and biogenic waste. His work contributes to the development of predictive models for processes relevant to energy transition and the circular use of carbon resources.

"I am deeply honored to receive the Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award. I am sincerely grateful to my mentors and colleagues at Politecnico di Milano, as well as to the many around the world who have been inspirational throughout my life and career, including passionate and dedicated students and excellent colleagues, many of them early career, with whom I have had the privilege to work. I am mindful of how selective this recognition is and of the many outstanding researchers in our field who are equally deserving. Looking ahead, I aim to contribute to advancing combustion and renewable energy science by bridging fundamental understanding with predictive chemical kinetics modeling of complex reactive systems, while fostering and educating the next generation of scientists, an effort further strengthened and motivated by this award."

Prof. Huangwei Zhang is an associate professor in Department of Mechanical Engineering at National University of Singapore (NUS). He received PhD degree from University of Cambridge. His research covers combustion, engine and fuels with theoretical analysis, numerical simulation, and experimental diagnostics. He leads and participates in major projects funded by Singapore’s Low-Carbon Energy Research Programme and NRF Decarb Programme, with substantial industrial and international collaborations. He was the Chair of the 15th Asia-Pacific Conference on Combustion and is on the Editorial Board of Combustion and Flame (2025-2030). He currently serves as the Chairperson of the Singapore Section of the Combustion Institute, on the Board of Directors of The Institute for Dynamics of Explosions and Reactive Systems, and Programme Director of MSc in Robotics in NUS Department of Mechanical Engineering.

"I am deeply honoured to receive the 2026 Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award. This recognition reflects the collective efforts of my students, research fellows, collaborators, and mentors, whose support and insights have been essential to my work. I am also grateful to the National University of Singapore for providing me an outstanding research environment to pursue impactful research. This award encourages me to continue exploring new unknowns in combustion science and to contribute to the development of sustainable technologies."