Yan Yu is a full professor of material science at University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). She received her Ph.D. in material science at USTC in 2006. From 2007 to 2008, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Florida International University. After that she received a Humboldt Research Fellowship and the Sofja Kovalevskaja award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and worked at the Max Planck Institute for Solid-State Research in Stuttgart, Germany. Her current research interests mainly include the design of novel nanomaterials for clean energy, especially for batteries and the fundamental science of energy-storage systems. She was selected as a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher in the field of Materials Science. She also received several awards and honors, such as the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, The 16th China Youth Science and Technology Award, Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry, etc.