Keynote Speeches

Prof. Alan Lau
Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
(Fellow of EAS&EASA, H-Index 67)

Professor Alan Lau In 1987, Dr Lau joined the Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company Ltd (HAECO) where he was employed as a craft apprentice in the aircraft maintenance division for 4 years. He received his Bachelor and Master degrees of Engineering in Aerospace Engineering from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University, Australia) in 1996 and 1997, respectively. Within that period, he also worked for General Aviation Maintenance Pty Ltd, Australia, as an Engineer Trainee, and for the Corporative Research Centre for Advanced Composite Structures (CRC-ACS) Australia, as a Research Assistant designing a repair scheme for composite performs. He received his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2001. Thereafter, he was appointed Assistant Professor in 2002 and promoted to Associate Professor and Full Professor in 2005 and 2010, respectively. In 2013, he was appointed as Associate Dean (Industrial Relations) of the Faculty of Engineering and Alex Wong/Gigi Wong Endowed Professor in Product Design Engineering.

Based on his outstanding research performance in the fields of advanced composites, FRP for infrastructure applications, smart structures and nano-materials, he has received numerous awards (for both research and teaching) including: The Best Paper Awards on Materials (1998), The Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fellowship Award (2000), Young Scientist Award (2002), Young Engineer of the Year Award (2004), Faculty Outstanding Award for Research and Scholarly Activities (2005), Award for Outstanding Research in Nanocomposites for Space Applications, USA (2006), Chemical Physics Letters, Most Cited Paper 2003- 2007 Award, President Award in Teaching 2008, Award for Innovative Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Technology at the 20th International Conference on College Teaching and Learning, USA (2009). He is also the Winner of the Ernest L. Boyer International Award for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Technology, in the same Conference (the first scholar outside the United States to receive this honour) and the Most Cited Paper Awards in Composites Part B: Engineering (issued by Elsevier Science). In 2011, Dr. Lau received the Outstanding International Researcher Award and the Outstanding International Research Leader Award from the International Association of Multidisciplinary Research (IAMR). This marks the first time that anyone has received both the awards making his achievement quite exceptional. In 2013, he was also awarded The University Grant Committee (UGC) Award for Teaching Excellence.

Due to his significant contribution to the field of science and engineering, he was elected as a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences in 2007, with the citation “For profound contributions to materials science and fundamental developments in the field of composite materials”, and was the first scholar in Hong Kong to receive this honor. In 2016, he was also elected as a Fellow of European Academy of Sciences and Arts. Three of his articles published in Composites Part B: Engineering; Composites Science and Technology; and Chemical Physics Letters were ranked in the TOP 1% MOST CITED ARTICLES within their field in 2006 and 2007, according to Essential Science IndicatorsSM. Six of his papers have been ranked among the top 25 hottest articles in Composites Part B: Engineering, issued by ScienceDirect, Elsevier (two of them were ranked No. 1 in 2007). Since 2002, Dr Lau has edited 5 books and published over 260 scientific and engineering articles and his publications have been cited over 4900 times with an h-index of 34 (Google citation 12,000 with the h-index of 52). Dr. Lau has also actively participated in many consultancy works with the industry. The scope of his works have mainly focused on failure analyses on different engineering systems.

Prof. Wing Kam Liu
Northwestern University, USA
Director of Global Center on Advanced Material Systems and Simulation, USA
(Fellow of ASME, ASCE, USACM, AAM, and IACM, H-Index 114)

Professor Wing Kam Liu is the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Northwestern University, Director of Global Center on Advanced Material Systems and Simulation, Past President (2018-present) and President (2014-2018) of the International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM), Past Chair (2017-2018) and Chair (2015-2016) of the US National Committee on TAM and Member of Board of International Scientific Organizations, both within the US National Academies. Selected synergistic activities includes the development of ICME multiscale theories, methods, and software with experimental validations for the design and analysis of engineering material systems, materials design, advanced and additive manufacturing; and technology transfer. He is Cited by Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) as one of the most highly cited, influential researchers in Engineering (2001) and Computer Science (2014). He has over 39 years of engineering and manufacturing consulting, including a broad array of companies and industries, small businesses, and international corporations. Liu’s selected honors include the Distinguished Achievement Team Award for industry-university-government partnerships from the DOE Vehicle Technologies Office; Japan Society of Computational Engineering Sciences Grand Prize; Computational Mechanics Award from Japanese Society of Mechanical Engineers; Honorary Professorship from Dalian University of Technology, IACM Gauss-Newton Medal (highest honor) and Computational Mechanics Award; ASME Dedicated Service Award, ASME Robert Henry Thurston Lecture Award, ASME Gustus L. Larson Memorial Award, ASME Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal and ASME Melville Medal; John von Neumann Medal (highest honor) and Computational Structural Mechanics Award from the US Association of Computational Mechanics (USACM). He was the founding Director of the NSF Summer Institute on Nano Mechanics and Materials and Founding Chair of the ASME NanoEngineering Council. He is the editor of two International Journals and honorary editor of two journals and has been a consultant for more than 20 organizations. Liu has written four books; and he is a Fellow of ASME, ASCE, USACM, AAM, and IACM.

Prof. Zhongfan Liu
Peking University, China
(Academician)

Professor Zhongfan Liu got his PhD in University of Tokyo in 1990. He is now the BOYA Chair Professor of Peking University in chemistry, the Director of Beijing Graphene Institute, and the Vice President of Chinese Chemical Society. His research interest focusses on low dimensional carbon materials, including the CVD growth of graphene and single-walled carbon nanotubes and their unique applications. Prof. Liu has published over 630 peer-reviewed articles and over 130 patents. His recent contributions to graphene areas include, superclean graphene, super graphene glass, graphene optical fiber and photochemical band structure engineering of graphene. The major academic awards he received include, National Natural Science Awards (2008, 2017), Chinese Chemical Society-AkzoNobel Chemical Science Award (2012), Baogang Outstanding Teacher Award (2012), the Lectureship Award of 2016 Colloid and Surface Chemistry Annual Meeting of Chemical Society of Japan, Beijing Municipal Excellent Teacher (2017), the 2018 ACS Nano Lectureship Award, and Peking University GUOHUA Excellent Scholar Award (2020). He was elected as the member of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011 and as one of the six outstanding scientists in Ten-Thousand-Talents Program in 2013. Prof. Liu is the Fellow of the Institute of Physics (UK, 2004), the Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (UK, 2014) and the Fellow of TWAS(2015). (getting more)

Speakers in 2023 to be announced soon......