Top China and International Honors for Innovative Academic Researchers Collect National Science and Technology Awards Prof Tianshou Zhao, Chair Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and his research team have won one of Mainland China’s most prestigious science and technology awards for the second consecutive year. Internationally, the eminent academic has also been selected as a World’s Most School of Engineering researchers have received two honors in the 2013 Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Science and Technology), presented by the Ministry of Education. A First Class Award in Scientific and Technological Progress was awarded to Prof Charles W W Ng, Chair Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, his collaborators from Tianjin University and Mainland China industry partners, who have developed a new theory and calculation methods for building underground structures in a more economical and faster way without compromising safety. They also identified key controlling factors which shed new light on deformation and failing mechanisms in deep underground structures. Influential Scientific Mind and a Highly Cited Researcher 2014 by Thomson Reuters. The team received a 2013 State Natural Science Award (Second Class) from the State Council for pioneering work on Direct Alcohol Fuel Cells (DAFC). Fuel cell technology is efficient and clean, and has a variety of applications including mobile phones, computers, automobiles and buildings. Prof Zhao’s research is focused on the physical and chemical process of fuel cells, successfully revealing the underlying mechanism of coupled heat/mass energy transfer and electrochemical kinetics in fuel cells and establishing a new theoretical framework. This significant breakthrough has improved the performance of direct alcohol fuel cells, and has A Second Class Award in Natural Science was presented to postdoctoral fellow Dr Tian Fang, Computer Science and Engineering, and collaborators from Beijing Normal University and Wuhan University, who put forward a series of novel approaches to improve clarity and segmentation accuracy when building complex 3D city models. The Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards recognize leading research projects driven this type of fuel cell closer to commercialization. The research has made a seminal contribution to the creation of a new interdisciplinary field between thermo-fluid sciences and electrochemistry. The Highly Cited Researcher honor is a new accolade announced recently to identify influential and contemporary researchers who have contributed significantly to highly cited publications in a given field. Researchers earn the distinction by publishing the greatest number of papers ranked among the top 1% most cited for their subject field and year of publication between 2002 and 2012. The 2014 list contains some 3,200 researchers in 21 fields of the sciences and social sciences. Prof Zhao is among only 187 researchers worldwide to be included in the list’s engineering field. at tertiary institutions in China and are presented to individuals or units that have made remarkable contributions in the areas of scientific discovery, technological innovation, science and technology advancement, and the implementation of patented technologies. IN FOCUS 10
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