Rate My Professor Yan Ma

Yan Ma is a materials scientist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering within the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Delft University of Technology, where he has been appointed since 2024. He obtained his B.Eng. in Metallurgical Engineering from the University of Science and Technology Beijing in 2013, followed by an M.Sc. in Metallurgical Engineering from RWTH Aachen University in 2015, and a Dr.-Ing. in Materials Science and Engineering from the same institution in 2019. His doctoral research focused on the physical metallurgy of third-generation advanced high-strength steels, particularly the role of interface chemistry in multiphase materials. Prior to joining TU Delft, Ma worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials (formerly Max Planck Institute for Iron Research) from 2020 to 2021 and has led the Sustainable Synthesis of Materials research group there since 2021.

Ma's research centers on sustainable metallurgy and metals, with key areas including hydrogen-based direct reduction of metal oxides for producing primary metals and manufacturing metal foams, as well as scrap-based steel design and processing to facilitate CO₂ emission reductions in the metal industry. He has published influential works such as 'Circular steel for fast decarbonization: thermodynamics, kinetics, microstructure behind upcycling scrap into high-performance sheet steel' (Annual Review of Materials Research, 2024), 'Hydrogen-based direct reduction of combusted iron powder: Deep pre-oxidation, reduction kinetics and microstructural analysis' (Acta Materialia, 2024), 'Reducing iron oxide with ammonia: A sustainable path to green steel' (Advanced Science, 2023), 'Hierarchical nature of hydrogen-based direct reduction of iron oxides' (Scripta Materialia, 2022), and 'Phase boundary segregation-induced strengthening and discontinuous yielding in ultrafine-grained duplex medium-Mn steels' (Acta Materialia, 2020). His contributions have been recognized with the Walter Benjamin Award from the German Research Foundation (2021), DGM Prize for Young Talent (2022), Stanford's top 2% most highly cited scientists (2023, 2024, 2025), IJMMM Outstanding Paper Award (2024), and appointment as Outstanding Youth Editorial Board Member of the International Journal of Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials (2024). Ma's research significantly impacts green steel production and sustainable metal processing.