Xu Ming

Chair Professor of Carbon Neutrality and Associate Dean, School of Environment, Tsinghua University

Ming Xu is the Chair Professor of Carbon Neutrality, Associate Dean for Research, Founding Director of Center of AI for Ecology and Environment in School of Environment at Tsinghua University. Prior to that, he was a Professor in School for Environment and Sustainability and a Professor in Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He earned his BS and MS from Tsinghua University, China, and PhD from Arizona State University, all in environmental engineering. His research focuses on environmental systems engineering, life cycle assessment, and environmental artificial intelligence. He was awarded the Robert A. Laudise Medal from International Society for Industrial Ecology for “outstanding achievement in industrial ecology by a researcher under the age of 36” in 2015. He received the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award in 2016. In 2021 he received the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize from American Society of Civil Engineers for “his significant contributions in advancing life-cycle environmental impact assessment of industrial systems.” In 2024 he is the only recipient of the Amazon Research Award from mainland China. He is the President of the International Society for Industrial Ecology (term 2023-2024). Currently he serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s flagship journal in environmental management, Resources, Conservation & Recycling (2023 Impact Factor 11.2). He has been leading the TianGong Initiative which consists of over 150 researchers from more than 40 institutions across the world to develop the TianGong LCA Database, an open and transparent life cycle assessment database. He also led the development of the world’s first large language model application in environment and sustainability (TianGong AI). Both TianGong LCA Database and TianGong AI can be accessed at https://www.tiangong.earth.