Light People: Professor Lin Li

How to deal with climate change, how to mitigate or even reverse it, maybe the hottest scientific topic of the 21st century. Do you know that a Chinese scientist and his team contributed to climate change control by reducing PM2.5 in diesel car exhaust by 35–40%? That scientist is Prof. Lin Li, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and founder of the Laser Processing Research Centre at The University of Manchester, United Kingdom. Of course, this is only one example of Professor Li’s scientific achievements. As a pioneer of microsphere super-resolution lens, his team, in collaboration with Singapore colleagues, broke the optical diffraction limit in optical microscopic imaging, making real-time observation of biological viruses without interference possible. He also used lasers to synthesize new nanomaterials which kill drug-resistant bacteria while remaining harmless to healthy human cells, which led to the development and breakthrough of related research fields. We are much honored to have Professor Lin Li for an exclusive interview in which he recalls his years of scientific research experience and talks about the future development trend of laser material processing.