From May 19 to 22, the 18th Annual Conference of the International Society for Porous Media (InterPore2026) was held in Nantes, France. More than 800 leading scholars from over 40 countries gathered to explore the frontiers of porous media. In recognition of Professor Yao Jun from our university receiving the 2025 InterPore Lifetime Achievement Medal (the first Chinese recipient of this honor), the conference specially set up the MS20 Special Session in Honor of Jun Yao, which became one of the most acclaimed highlights of the conference.

This year’s conference launched 4 plenary lectures, 8 invited presentations, 20 minisymposia and 4 short courses.A total of 414 oral presentations and 328 poster presentations were delivered throughout the event, with discussions centered on five major frontier trends: multi-scale flow, multi-field coupling, high-resolution characterization, data-driven simulation, and green and low-carbon energy transition.

To recognize Professor Yao Jun’s foundational contributions to the field of multiphase flow in porous media and oil and gas flow in porous media, the InterPore Academic Committee specially established an honorary session. The session received 67 submissions, and 45 accepted submissions were presented as oral talks split into eight separate sessions, setting a record for the largest-scale Honor Session for a Lifetime Achievement Medal recipient in InterPore’s history. The session comprehensively showcased the cutting-edge achievements of the Research Center of Multiphase Flow in Porous Media, represented by Professor Yao Jun.

Professor Yang Yongfei delivering a plenary lecture

During the conference, the research team from the Research Center of Multiphase Flow in Porous Media achieved remarkable results. Professor Yang Yongfei, as the only invited Chinese scholar, delivered an invited conference talk, systematically presenting the frontier progress and future directions of mechanics of flow in porous media in unconventional oil and gas reservoirs. Faculty and students from the team collectively contributed 11 oral presentations in parallel sessions, covering core research directions such as pore-scale mechanisms, multi-scale simulation, numerical modeling and engineering optimization, fully demonstrating the center’s core competitiveness in theoretical innovation, technological breakthroughs and international collaboration.

Professor Yao Jun is the founder of our university’s Research Center of Multiphase Flow in Porous Media. He devoted himself to research on multiphase flow in porous media and mechanics ofoil and gas flow in porous media throughout his career, established the modern theoretical framework for oil and gas flow in porous media, and tackled a series of key scientific and engineering challenges, advancing China’s porous media research to the international forefront. He has been elected as an SPE Honorary Member and is the first Chinese recipient of the InterPore Lifetime Achievement Medal. He has published 12 monographs and textbooks, over 400 papers, with more than 27,000 Google Scholar citations and an H‑index of 79. Named as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher three times,he stands as the sole global recipient in petroleum engineering. As the founding chair of the InterPore China Chapter, he has continuously promoted international academic exchanges and the deep integration of industry, academia and research, making milestone contributions to the internationalization of the discipline.