Mingfang Lu joined IOP Publishing (IOP) since January 2002 as the Chief Representative and Editorial Director of IOP Beijing Office. In January 2003, he was elected IOP Fellow (FInstP) by the Institute Council. From January 2007, he was promoted to IOP Editor-in-Chief, China. His responsibilities include getting top quality Chinese papers to IOP journals, leading the editorial team at IOP Beijing Office, promoting Chinese physics journals to the world through partnership publishing with IOP, promoting IOP journals business in China, and developing and enhancing the good Sino-UK relations in the physics and related fields.

Before joining IOP, Mingfang Lu got his PhD degree from the Gas Discharge and Plasma Lab, Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University in 1995 on Fusion Plasma Physics and Plasma Focus researches. He then did post-doctoral researches on Plasma Materials Sciences in the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing from 1995 to 1997, as Post-doctoral Fellows in the Plasma Lab, Department of Particle Physics, Weizmann Institute of Sciences, Israel from 1999 to April 2000, and in the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF) in Kiruna from April 2000 to December 2001. In IRF, he worked on the neutral atom detection project for the Mars Express Spacecraft Mission of the European Space Agency (ESA). The spacecraft had been working successfully in the Mars orbit since launched in June 2003. Mingfang Lu also worked as a guest professor for a short term in Nihon (Japan) University on plasma focus neutron emission researches. He had published more than 30 research papers in international physics journals before 2002, including Phys Rev, J Phys D, RSI, etc.