Professor Xian Kong received his B.S. degree (2010) and Ph.D. (2016) from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He conducted postdoctoral research at the National University of Singapore (2016–2017) with Professor Jianwen Jiang, followed by further postdoctoral training at Stanford University (2017–2021) with Professor Jian Qin. Since 2021, he has been a Professor at the School of Emergent Soft Matter, South China University of Technology. Professor Kong’s research focuses on the molecular theory and simulation of charged soft matter, including polyelectrolytes, organic mixed ionic-electronic conductors, polymer electrolytes, and membranes for desalination. He has developed novel multi-scale modeling techniques, combining coarse-grained simulations, polymer field theory, and machine learning methods to study structural regulation, ionic transport, and electrochemical properties in soft matter systems. His work has been published in prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Professor Xian Kong’s research focuses on molecular theory and multi-scale simulation of charged soft matter, emphasizing polymer electrolytes, polyelectrolytes, organic mixed ionic-electronic conductors, and membranes for desalination. His early work extended polymer field theory by incorporating ion solvation effects, revealing electrostatic regulation mechanisms in phase separation and self-assembly of charged polymers, including complex spherical phases and hyperuniform states. Recently, he developed field-coupled coarse-grained molecular dynamics methods to study dynamic structural evolution processes under non-equilibrium conditions, successfully modeling phenomena such as lithium dendrite growth in polymer electrolytes. Additionally, through high-throughput simulations combined with machine learning, his team elucidated how multi-level structural features influence ionic transport and ion selectivity. Inspired by biological ion channels, he and coworkers designed synthetic nanochannels with high potassium-to-sodium selectivity. Current research in his group involves developing new theoretical and simulation approaches tailored to charged soft matters, providing theoretical foundations for the rational design of functional soft matter materials in flexible electronics and energy storage devices.