There is one teacher in Center for Earth System Science (CESS): he is dedicated to research, contributing to protecting the beautiful blue sky; he is rigorous with teaching, educating students with his own practices. He is Professor Zhang Qiang in CESS, being awarded with National Science Foundation of Outstanding Youth.

Air pollution is a severe environmental problem we are facing with. According to the estimation from Global Burden of Disease, long time exposure to PM2.5 has led to over 900 thousand people premature deaths over China in 2013. Facing with large health threat and economic loss due to air pollution, we urgently need to know such questions: what is the source of air pollution? what role dose human activities play in it? And how can we improve the air quality? Professor Zhang Qiang have been committed to answering the above questions, from Tsinghua university to Argonne National Laboratory and then back to China. He aims to develop a multidimensional traceability technology for atmospheric composite pollution. He has conducted a series of researches focused on emission inventory methodology, emission forcing analysis, regional high spatial and temporal resolution emission inventory developing and application, emission calibration and evaluation and other fields. After years of efforts, Professor Zhang Qiang and his team has set up a dynamic emissions inventory methodology system, which can identify the key factors and driving forces of anthropogenic emissions change in China. The online emission list technology platform developed by his team has been widely used at home and abroad. The method of satellite remote sensing to evaluate emission was developed, which qualify the evolution characteristics of major pollutants emission in China. Related results have been published in the Nature, Natural Climate Change, National Academy of Sciences, and other international top journals, with a wide range of international influence.

In addition to publishing scientific papers in the top academic journals, Professor Zhang Qiang and his team also are devoted to China's air quality protection work. During the 2015 Sep.3 parade and the 2016 G20 Summit, in order to ensure the air quality of the environment, Professor Zhang Qiang and his team was stationed in Shijiazhuang and Hangzhou, to carry out measures to protect air quality and provide guidance and technical support on security programs, evaluation of program effects and other aspects, which has made an important contribution to the work of protecting air quality during the 9.3 parade and the successful completion of the G20 summit.

A rigorous and devoted research team also provides a great environment for talent growth. Not only Professor Zhang Qiang became one of the top experts in atmospheric pollutant emission quantitative characterization research, his graduate students also repeatedly made breakthrough and gained achievements in research. In his gourp, PhD student Tong Dang published a paper in the "Natural Earth Science", PhD student Zheng Yixuan won the Asia Society Oceania Earth Science Conference (AOGS) best poster award. Professor Zhang Qiang has been leading a group of Tsinghua students to solve the pollution problem, improve the living environment of the city resident.

Zhang Qiang, got his Ph.D. degree of Environmental Science and Engineering in Tsinghua University in 2006, and worked as postdoctoral at the Argonne National Laboratory in Austria during 2006-2009. In addition, he also did visiting researches in the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis and the University of Tennessee. He is engaged in the research on quantitative analysis of pollutant emissions of global and regional scale, atmospheric composition satellite remote sensing observations, numerical simulation for air quality, regional air pollution sources and energy systems and climate environment etc. He has published more than 110 SCI articles, 12 of them have high citation. The highest one is cited more than 700 times. In 2012, he was awarded the Outstanding Youth Science Foundation. In October 2016, Professor Zhang won the National Science Foundation of Outstanding Youth