Editor in Chief

Professor Li He: Profile

Li He earned BSc & MSc at Beihang University (1982, 1984), and PhD at the University of Cambridge (1990). He remained at Cambridge as a postdoc and college research fellow until 1993, then moved to Durham University, as Lecturer (1993), Reader (1998) and Professor (2000). At Durham, he became the Head of Thermofluids and the Director of Research for the School of Engineering, before being elected to the 5-year Royal Academy of Engineering/Rolls-Royce Research Chair at the University of Oxford (2008-2013).

He had held the Statutory Professorship of Computational Aerothermal Engineering at the University of Oxford for 18 years before retiring from his chair in Oct 2025. He had been the head of the Osney Laboratory (2008-2011), the acting director of the Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre (UTC) in Heat Transfer and Aerodynamics (2008-2010), and the Oxford Co-Director of UK EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Gas Turbine Aerodynamics (2014-2023). During his headship, the Osney Lab had undertaken a major (18 months) upgrading relocation, acquired the 2nd generation flagship Oxford Turbine Research Facility (OTRF), and doubled the number of academics. The new Osney Lab, officially opened by the Oxford Vice-Chancellor with over 100 invited national and international guests in attendance in Sept 2010, has been the centre of reinvigorated turbomachinery thermofluids research at Oxford (known as ‘Oxford thermofluids institute’ since 2018).

Professor He’s primary research interest is in developing novel unsteady aerodynamic, aeroelastic and heat transfer prediction and design/optimization methods. He is recognised for instigating the Fourier harmonic methods for turbomachinery in 1990s. The Fourier methods have since then been further developed in various forms, implemented in many commercial, industrial and research CFD codes for practical applications worldwide. The corresponding development efforts have also evolved into an active research topic area in turbomachinery over the past three decades.

He has been an invited speaker in keynote and plenary lectures at a number of international conferences, also at the VKI lecture series on Turbomachinery Unsteady Flows (1996), Aeroelasticity (1999), CFD Methods (2025), and the NATO lecture series on Gas Turbine Design Optimization (2010). He has been an associate editor for the Aeronautical Journal (2012-), the ASME Journal of Turbomachinery (2012-2019) and the Journal of GPPS (2014-2019). He was a special issue guest editor for the Journal of Turbomachinery (2018-2019), the International Journal of Computational Fluid Dynamics (2012-2013) and Applied Thermal Engineering (2020-2021). He served as the review chair for the GPPS technical conference (2017), the conference chair of the 15th International Symposium of Unsteady Aerodynamics, Aeroelasticity and Aeroacoustics in Turbomachinery (ISUAAAT). Since 2020, He has been serving as the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of GPPS.

Professor He has published more than 100 journal articles (including about 25 as the single author) and 10 patents (as the lead applicant) filed in UK, Europe and the US. He was the recipient of 7 ASME/IGTI Best Paper prizes: in Heat Transfer (2009, 2017, 2020, 2024), in Turbomachinery (2015, 2020) and in Steam Turbines (2017). He also received a Best Paper Prize (2017) and Special Outstanding Contribution Award (2025) from the GPPS. Professor He was honoured for Lifetime Achievement by ISUAAAT (2025) and GPPS (2026), also a recipient of the ASME Gas Turbine Award (2021).

Professor He was elected to Fellow of ASME in 2006, Fellow of Royal Aeronautical Society in 2011.