Dr. Wenbo Li, the Professor and Doctoral Supervisor in the Department of Mineral Engineering at Northeastern University, has been recognized as a National Young Talent, serves as the Principal Investigator of the National Key R&D Program Young Scientist Project, and is a recipient of the Huo Yingdong Education Foundation Young Faculty Award in Higher Education and the Liaoning Outstanding Youth in Science and Technology Award. Dr. Li holds the position of Director at the Liaoning Provincial Technology Innovation Center for Mineral Materials and Deputy Director of the National-Local Joint Engineering Research Center for Efficient Development and Utilization Technology of Refractory Iron Ore Resources. Over the past five years, Dr. Li has published more than 50 SCI-indexed papers and contributed to three monographs, while accumulating 40 authorized invention patents. Dr. Li's research primarily focuses on the theoretical and technological aspects of efficient development and utilization of complex and refractory mineral resources. His research team has pioneered the development of hydrogen-based phase transformation technology for refractory iron ores. Specifically, he has conducted extensive roasting experiments on dozens of typical refractory iron ores worldwide, including high-phosphorus oolitic iron ore from Algeria, tailings from Ansteel Mining Company’s eastern concentrator, raw ore and direct flotation tailings from Donganshan, and limonite from Yunnan Gold, targeting the beneficiation of weakly magnetic iron ores dominated by hematite, limonite, and siderite. Furthermore, in the field of magnetic separation and reagent-aggregation enhancement for iron mineral beneficiation, Professor Li was the first to propose the concept of reagent-enhanced separation in high-intensity magnetic separation processes. This approach achieved outstanding results in industrial trials at Ansteel’s Donganshan Sintering Plant, providing a novel technical pathway for enhancing the recovery of fine-grained weakly magnetic iron minerals through high-intensity magnetic separation and subsequent reverse flotation.
