The people behind the cable

From lab science to real engineering service

This is the team that built China’s first 1,000 km HTS material production line and produced its first 1,000-meter HTS wire, raising China to the world’s second-largest HTS wire manufacturing capability.

In 2004 they delivered China’s first grid-connected HTS cable, commissioned at the Puji substation in Yunnan. It has now run continuously for more than 20 years — both the first research HTS cable and the first in real engineering service in China.

Trained at Tsinghua University’s applied superconductivity research center, Richard has worked on HTS materials and their industrialization since 2000. He was a core researcher on China’s first 1,000 km HTS production line and first 1,000-meter HTS wire, and a core engineer on China’s first grid-connected HTS cable in 2004. From 2001 to 2010 he was a core participant in several of China’s national superconductivity programs (the National 863 major superconductivity project), and he holds 6 patents and 15+ technical standards. He currently serves as a standing director of the China technical committee of the IEEE Power & Energy Society.

Beijing Jiaotong University professor specializing in superconducting materials, cables and machines — from bus architecture to quench monitoring and validated prototypes.

AC-loss specialist; postdoc at the Slovak Academy of Sciences and contributor to the EU Horizon 2020 Advanced Superconducting Motor demonstrator.

HTS machine design — developed a 100 kW HTS motor and works on electromagnetic launch and flywheel energy storage systems.

Focuses on HTS transformer technology — electromagnetic design, magnet development, winding fabrication and analysis at Beijing Jiaotong University.

Works on HTS cable design and testing, with a focus on real-time monitoring: fiber-optic sensing, quench detection and integrated cooling control.

Designs and builds cryogenic cooling systems for HTS cables — critical-current and AC-loss calculation, COMSOL multiphysics modeling and thermal study.

Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand with 25 years leading materials-science and applied-physics research in high-temperature superconductors.

Fellow of the UK Royal Academy of Engineering and the IET; former Head of Electrical Engineering at the University of Bath, with 60+ years in electrical machines.

Director of the Robinson Research Institute; a physics PhD who has been a visiting scientist at MIT, Cambridge and American Superconductor across 25 years of HTS research.

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