From November 18th to 19th, the International Congress on Materials Degradation and Protection 2022 (ICMDP 2022) was virtually held via Zoom meeting. The Congress was co-organized by the USTB National Materials Corrosion and Protection Data Center, Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Materials Genome Engineering at USTB, and the Chinese Society for Corrosion and Protection (CSCP), with the aim of discussing major scientific issues such as environmental adaptability and service safety faced by engineering equipment and materials during their global development, and jointly advance the worldwide promotion and application of new green and intelligent corrosion-resistant materials as well as protection technologies. A total of 32 renowned experts and scholars in the field of material corrosion and protection from 22 countries, including China, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Egypt, attended and exchanged at the forum. Ms. HE Wei, Deputy Director of the International Cooperation Department of the China Association for Science and Technology, and Mr. LU Xiaopeng, Director of the Beijing International Science and Technology Exchange Center, were invited to attend the meeting.

Prof. LV Zhaoping, Vice President of USTB, gave the opening speech, in which he extended a warm welcome to the distinguished guests on behalf of USTB and introduced the current development of the USTB teaching and research team in materials corrosion/degradation and protection. Prof. LV Zhaoping called on experts and scholars from all over the world to take this conference as an opportunity to create a greater and stronger environment for international communication and cooperation and to jointly promote the leapfrog development in the field of material corrosion/degradation and protection in the era of big data.

During the forum, plenary/keynote lectures on recent advances in corrosion/degradation mechanisms and experimental and modeling techniques of materials were presented by Prof. Philippe Marcus, a global leader in corrosion from the Chimie ParisTech, France; Prof. Fatima Montemor, Vice-president of the Instituto Superior Tecnico, Portugal; Prof. Tomas Prosek, President-Elect of the European Federation of Corrosion and a professor at the University of Chemical Technology Prague, Czech Republic; Prof. Wei Gao, Member of the Royal New Zealand Academy of Sciences and a professor at the University of Auckland, New Zealand; Prof. Arjan Mol, Editor-in-chief of Corrosion Science, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands; and other experts. A session on the journal npj Materials Degradation was also held during the conference, which was presided over by Dr. LI Laiquan from the Springer Nature Publishing Group. Prof. Nick Birbilis, the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Prof. Stephane Gin, Prof. Ingrid Milosev, Associate Editor, and others participated in the session.

Over 900 experts and scholars attended the online forum. As a high-end academic exchange platform to promote international exchange and cooperation, this conference successfully provided global researchers in the field of material corrosion/degradation and protection with an opportunity for in-depth and extensive conversations and laid a solid foundation for further promoting the preparation of the International Materials Degradation Society.

Draft: JI Shuang

Revision: CHENG Mingyuan & ZHANG Bowei