Prof. Mingwang FU

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China Hongkong 

Mingwang FU (M.W. FU) is a Chair Professor of Advanced Manufacturing in the Dept of Mech. Eng., The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). He is a Fellow of Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) and Hong Kong Institute of Engineers (HKIE). Professor Fu is the Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellow and an Associate Director of Research Institute for Advanced Manufacturing at HK PolyU.

From 1987 to 1995, he worked as a faculty member in China. Upon completion of his PhD study in the National University of Singapore in 1997, he joined the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology as a Senior Research Engineer. In Aug 2006, he joined the HK PolyU as a faculty member. Professor Fu is quite active in exploring advanced materials processing, multi-scaled and deformation-based manufacturing, plasticity/damage/fracture/fatigue of materials, FEM modelling and simulation, size effects and micro-mechanics. These efforts aim at seeking for an epistemological understanding of the physical nature behind these disciplines, developing the knowledge in these areas, and successfully addressing a plethora of challenges and bottlenecked issues in these domains, and eventually developing the state-of-the-art manufacturing processes and solutions. His research has benefited the development of the technologies in the above-described fields and led to over 300 journal publications, 6 monographs and one edited volume of the Encyclopedia of Materials: Metals and Alloys published by top publishers. He often gives plenary talk in many international conferences, including ICTP, NumiForm, WCMNM, etc., in different countries.He is also sitting in the Editorial Board or as an Associate Editor in some longstanding journals.

Prof. Shouxun Ji

Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Technology,Britain

Prof. Shouxun Ji is currently a Professor at Brunel University London. He has been focusing on the development of lightweight materials and structures for the automotive industry, aerospace, powered tools, and other sectors. The main activities include purpose-developed aluminium alloys and magnesium alloys with improved ductility, strength (at ambience and elevated temperatures), modulus and thermal conductivity, and the hybrid structures using different materials and different joining techniques. He is also working on new materials and structures for special applications, such as materials for explosive cords and high strength casting materials for aircraft. His works have helped industrial partners to deliver several products in massive manufacturing. Recently, he worked with world leading company to develop magnesium alloys for small engine applications, which requires improved strength and thermal conductivity at room temperature and at elevated temperatures.

Prof. Ji have plenty experiences in high pressure die casting including die structure design, gating system design and optimisation, casting process and casting materials. He also worked extensively on other shaped-casting processes such as sand casting, gravity casting, low pressure die casting, semi-solid metal processing of rheo-die casting, rheo-extrusion, and rheo-twin roll casting. His previous works also included cast irons (spheroidal graphite cast iron and austempered ductile iron) and copper alloys.

Prof. Ji has published more than 130 papers in the peer-reviewed scientific Journals and more than 20 international patents. He is the member of three ISO technical committee and one BSI technical committee and the editorial member of three scientific journals. 

Prof. Mingxing Zhang

University of Queensland, Australia

Professor Mingxing Zhang obtained his Bachelor of Engineering from Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, China, and Master of Engineering from Northwestern Polytechnical University, China. In 1997, he was awarded his PhD degree by The University of Queensland. He is currently a Professor at the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering, The University of Queensland.

His research interests include additive manufacturing of metals and MAX phase materials, high-entropy alloys, new alloy design through machine learning, application of crystallography to engineering materials, surface engineering of metals, grain refinement for cast metals, surface modification and coatings, bainitic transformation, and bainitic steels. Professor Zhang is a world leader in the field of crystallography of phase transformations and its applications in engineering materials, and is recognized as one of the top researchers in the areas of phase transformations, grain refinement for cast metals, additive manufacturing of metals, and surface engineering.

Assoc. Prof. Zhenhai Xia

Faculty of Engineering, University of New South Wales, Australia

Dr. Zhenhai Xia is an Associate Professor at School of Chemical Engineering and the Deputy Director of the Australian Carbon Materials Centre at the University of New South Wales, Australia. His research interests encompass multiscale and multi-physics modeling of clean energy conversion and storage, biological and bioinspired materials as well as mechanics of nanostructured materials/composites. He has authored one book, seven book chapters, and over 230 publications in peer-reviewed journals, including those in the Science and Nature series. His work has garnered over 30,000 citations with an h-index of 67 (Google Scholar). Dr. Xia has received numerous awards, including the 1997 Humboldt Scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the 2015 Nanoscience Research Leader Award from Science Letters, USA, and the 2019 Somiya Award from the International Union of Materials Research Societies. He is also an associate editor for Frontiers in Energy Materials and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Assoc. Prof. Wentao Yan

National University of Singapore, Singapore 

Yan Wentao is an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the National University of Singapore. He joined NUS in August 2018. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University and a visiting researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He received his Ph.D. from Tsinghua University in Beijing in March 2017. From October 2014 to March 2017, he was a joint doctoral student at Northwestern University. He obtained his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2012. 

Professor Yan is actively committed to exploring fields such as additive manufacturing, 3D printing; computational mechanics, multi-scale and multi-physics simulations, data-driven modeling, and the integration of physical models and data analysis.

Prof. Liliang Wang

Imperial College Londun,Britain

Wang Liliang received his PhD degree from Delft University of Technology. He joined Imperial College in 2009.

Prof. Wang’s main research interests include the design and development of advanced metal forming technologies and manufacturing systems. His work has made fundamental contributions to material characterization and modeling, as well as interface behavior research of engineering materials. In particular, Professor Wang's research has had a direct impact on sustainable manufacturing.

Dr Wang has been one of the few scholars pioneering the field of cloud computing finite element analysis, combining this analysis with advanced material and process modeling techniques to study a wide range of metal forming processes. The data-driven methods developed in his research will enable new research topics, manufacturing technologies, and business models to be developed and operated more efficiently.

Dr Wang has published over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. Since 2014, his papers have been cited more than 750 times, with an h-index of 15. Professor Wang's growing international reputation is reflected in his numerous invited presentations and positive evaluations of his research work from scientists in the UK, many European countries, and China. Professor Wang serves on the scientific committee of two international conferences and is a reviewer for 23 international journals.

Prof. Peidong Wu

McMaster University, Canada

Peidong Wu, currently a professor at McMaster University. He is Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. He received his bachelor's degree in Solid Mechanics from the Department of Mechanics at Zhejiang University in 1982, and obtained his doctorate from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands in 1994. In 2001, he was elected as the Technical Manager of Alcan Inc., and in 2006, he was appointed as a tenured professor at McMaster University. 

Professor Wu is an internationally renowned expert in material constitutive modeling and metal forming. His constitutive models have been widely applied in industrial fields. He pioneered a rigorous crystal plasticity-based approach for constructing technically important metal forming limit diagrams and assessing rope-like surface defects in aluminum. He has made significant contributions to increasing aluminum usage in automobiles, reducing the weight of aluminum cans, minimizing resource consumption, and environmental protection.

Prof. Yanjun Li

Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

Yanjun Li (Born 1970),  professor of Physical Meallurgy.  He obtained his Ph.D in Materials Science and Engineering (1997). He had worked as Research Metallurgist at Hydro Aluminium (2005-2007), and Senior Research Scientist at Group of Materials Physics, SINTEF M&K (2008-2013) before he joined NTNU as a full professor in 2013.  In 2019, he worked as a Visiting Professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, MIT, for 6 month.

His current research areas include alloy solidification, grain refinement, precipitation transformation and strengthening, deformation and recrystallization, grain boundary segregation and strengthening, first-principles calculations, and microstructural simulation. He has published over 170 academic papers in journals such as Acta Mater, Additive Manufacturing, Int J Plasticity, and Nature Comm.

Prof. Heng Li

Northwestern Polytechnical University, China

Professor Li Heng is a doctoral supervisor at the School of Materials Science and Engineering. He serves as the leader of the LIFE (Limit Forming and Intelligent Manufacturing of Aerospace Advanced Materials) team. His teaching and research primarily focus on advanced materials' high-performance processing and limit forming intelligent manufacturing. He has made significant progress in the following areas: performance-driven collaborative design and manufacturing of material-structure-process for high-performance components, digital and green sustainable processing and forming technologies, microstructural information inheritance and evolution control during forming and service of difficult-to-deform materials, and multi-field multi-scale mathematical modeling across the entire manufacturing cycle.

Professor Li has been invited to serve as an editorial board member for multiple prestigious domestic and international journals, including TOP journals such as International Journal of Plasticity, Chinese Journal of Aeronautics, International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Advanced Manufacturing, Journal of Plasticity Engineering, and Precision Forming Engineering. He also serves on academic and organizing committees for international conferences such as ICTP and Plasticity, and holds positions such as Deputy Director of the Standing Academic Committee for the Tube Forming Technology Forum of the Plasticity Engineering Branch.

Prof. Jianfei Chen

South University of Science and Technology, China

Chen Jianfei has taught at prestigious universities both in China and abroad, including Zhejiang University (1987-1992), the University of Nottingham (2001-2002), and the University of Edinburgh (2002-2013). He joined Southern University of Science and Technology in 2019. Professor Chen's research interests cover two disciplines: civil engineering and mechanics of granular materials.

His main research areas include:

(1) Applications of high-performance fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites in civil engineering;

(2) Research and applications of advanced discrete element and finite element methods;

(3) Granular mechanics, bulk particle flow in silos, and their interactions with storage structures.

Professor Chen has made systematic and innovative research contributions in these three fields, which have had significant global impact.

As of June 2018, he has published one monograph and over 300 journal and conference papers, including more than 80 SCI-indexed journal papers. These publications have been cited 7,664 times on Google Scholar and 4,049 times in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS), with 3,326 citations from other authors (excluding self-citations). His 77 SCI papers have an H-index of 26 in WoS. He was selected as one of the 150 "Highly Cited Researchers in Civil Engineering" globally in 2016, according to a joint publication by ShanghaiRanking and Elsevier.

Prof. Lihua Zhan

Central South University, China

Zhan Lihua is a second-level professor and doctoral supervisor. She has long been engaged in research on the integrated manufacturing theory and technology of lightweight, high-strength, large-scale components' shape and performance. She has presided over more than 20 national and provincial-level scientific and technological projects, including National 973 Program projects, major project topics of the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, National Key R&D Projects, National Major Science and Technology Projects (04 Special Project) topics, Civil Aircraft Special Project topics, National Natural Science Foundation Key/General Projects, and Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation Key Projects. 

She has published over 250 papers in domestic and international authoritative journals in the field of plastic processing, such as IJP and JMPT, with a total of over 1,500 citations on Google Scholar, the highest single-paper citation being 250 times, and has been granted 70 national patents. She has authored one Chinese monograph, contributed six chapters to Chinese and English monographs, delivered more than ten invited reports at international conferences, and served as an editorial board member of multiple international and domestic journals, including IJLMM (International Journal of Lightweight Material and Manufacturing).

With continuous support from national projects (topics), through interdisciplinary integration of mechanics, materials, chemistry, physics, and mathematics, Professor Zhan Lihua has studied and revealed the basic laws governing various extreme forming capabilities and cross-scale microstructural evolution of materials involved in the entire component manufacturing process under abnormal manufacturing conditions, as well as their impact on macro-service performance. She has explored mechanisms and component manufacturing modes for coordinating precision forming and performance improvement.She has made breakthroughs in major technical challenges in manufacturing lightweight and high-strength materials and components for aerospace applications, achieved multiple innovative research outcomes, developed core technologies, and made significant contributions to aerospace and weapon equipment manufacturing.

Prof. Quentin Ramasse

University of Leeds, Britain 

Prof. Quentin Ramasse holds a joint Chair in Advanced Electron Microscopy at the School of Chemical and Process Engineering and School of Physics, University of Leeds. After an M.Eng. at Ecole Centrale Paris and an M.Math (Part III of the Mathematical Tripos) at the Unviersity of Cambridge, he obtained his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Cambridge as a member of the Microstructural Physics Group working on optical aberration measurements methodologies for aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). He then moved to the National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM) in Berkeley, a U.S. Department of Energy-funded user facility, initially for a postdoctoral fellowship before being appointed Staff Scientist. At NCEM he took part in the TEAM project which saw development of the world's first 0.5Å electron microscope. Since 2010, Quentin is the Director of the SuperSTEM Laboratory, the EPSRC UK National Research Facility for Advanced Electron Microscopy, which is located on the outskirts of Warrington on the SciTech Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus. Quentin has published extensively in the field of STEM-EELS, with a dual focus on STEM technique development and on applications to a wide range of energy harvesting materials, from 2-dimensional materials such as graphene and MoS2 nano-catalysts to complex oxides.

Prof. Puneet Tandon

PDPM Indian Institute of Information Technology, India 

Dr. Puneet Tandon is the professor of Mechanical Engineering and professor of Design at PDPM Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design & Manufacturing (IIITDM Jabalpur), India. With over 15 years as a professor and 36+ years of total experience, he leads research in Product Design & Innovation (Generative AI, Design Thinking, AI/ML in Manufacturing), Advanced Hybrid Manufacturing (Dieless Manufacturing, Additive/Incremental Forming), and Digital Design & Manufacturing (Data-driven Smart Manufacturing, Bio-CAD, Sustainable Design). He holds 46 patents (22 granted, including 9 international), has authored 365 publications (160 peer-reviewed journal papers, 171 conference papers, 2 books, 8 edited books/proceedings, and 24 book chapters), and secured numerous nationally funded projects (DST, SERB, BRNS). Prof. Tandon is an Honorary Professor at Nosov Magnitogorsk State Technical University (Russia) and serves on editorial boards for multiple international journals (MATEC Web of Conferences, Journal of Modern Mechanical Engineering). He has organized flagship conferences (ASME IMECE, I-4AM) and delivered keynotes on Generative AI in Design and Hybrid Manufacturing worldwide.