Prof. FU Lin Received Early Career Award 2022/23 by Research Grants Council

Prof. FU Lin, Assistant Professor of Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Department of Mathematics, received an Early Career Award 2022/23 from the Research Grants Council (RGC) of Hong Kong. The award recognizes the academic quality of his research project “A High-Order and High-Fidelity Scale-Resolving Aerodynamic Prediction Framework for Transonic Flows” submitted under the Early Career Scheme of RGC. A funding of around HK$1.2 million was granted to the project.

The project aims to advance the flow prediction technology in aerospace engineering. Moreover, the proposed numerical method can be applied to other Partial Differential Equations (PDEs), which govern a broad range of physics.

Introduced in 2012/13, the Early Career Scheme is intended to nurture junior academics and prepare them for a career in education and research. In addition to the funding awarded to the project for carrying out the proposed research, an honorary title of “Early Career Award” will be awarded to the Principal Investigators (PIs), together with HK$100,000 per funded project for the PI to undertake educational activities for training undergraduate students for conducting research, if the research proposal was rated as outstanding and its education plan was rated as satisfactory. On top of these, HKUST also provides HK$50,000 matching fund for the project.

Prof. Fu’s research focuses on the fundamental study of flow physics including turbulence, transitional flows, multi-phase flows, and electrically conducting fluids. His research dedicates to an improved theoretical understanding of these complex fluids and contributes to optimizing the engineering quantities of interest, such as drag, heat transfer, and mixing ratio. The potential applications involve the flow control of transonic and low-speed vehicles, scramjet hypersonic propulsion systems, combustions, microbubble dynamics, cavitation, aerodynamics and so on.