 Professor DAI Jianguo | [Presentation Title] Advancing Non-destructive Detection of Tile Debonding in Building Facades Prof. Dai is Chair Professor in Structural Engineering and Head of the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at City University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on innovative life-cycle maintenance technologies for concrete Infrastructure. His research work has been recognised by numerous awards, such as “Best Basic Research Paper Award” from the Journal of Composites for Construction, ASCE, the “International Outstanding Collaboration Award” from JSCE, “Structural Excellence Award-Grand Award” from HKIE, and the “Second Prize of the National Technological Invention Award.” He is also a co-founder of a start-up and received a Gold Medal at the special edition of the Geneva Inventions Expo 2022. Professor Dai is a Fellow of several professional societies, including HKIE, HKCI, IIFC, ACF, and IAAM. He has authored over 300 SCI papers, which have attracted more than 23,000 citations, resulting in an H-index of 86 according to Google Scholar. Furthermore, he is recognized on Stanford’s list of the top 2% most cited scientists. |
 Professor FANG Dongping | [Presentation Title] Rethinking Urban Resilience Prof. Fang is a professor at the School of Civil Engineering, Tsinghua University. He also serves as the director of the Institute for Future Cities and Infrastructures. He is currently president of the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB). Prof. Fang specializes in construction safety and urban resilience. He developed a cognition-based Leadership-Culture-Behavior (LCB) approach for construction safety and a Trio-space Framework (Physical-Societal-Cyber) for urban resilience. Currently his research focuses on human-centric approaches to improve urban resilience against earthquakes and floods. Prof. Fang has authored over 200 papers in peer-reviewed academic journals. He has been invited as a keynote speaker at more than 50 international conferences such as World Building Congress 2016 and 2022, and Urban Transitions 2017. His contributions have earned him awards from the Construction Industry Council in Hong Kong, and the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) in the UK. From 2020 to 2025, he was the dean of civil engineering at Tsinghua University. |
 Professor HU Xiaonong | [Presentation Title] Development and Future Perspectives of Karst Dynamics Prof. Hu (Bill X. Hu) is Dean and Professor of the School of Water Conservancy and Environment at the University of Jinan. He previously served as a tenured professor and Director of the Groundwater Research Center at Florida State University, USA. He was selected for China’s National Overseas High-Level Talent Program and awarded the CNSF Outstanding Young Scientists Fund (Class B). His research focuses on karst dynamics, stochastic hydrogeology, surface water–groundwater interactions, seawater intrusion, and hydrochemistry. He has led or participated in more than 60 major research projects funded by the U.S. NSF, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Ministry of Science and Technology. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers and served as editor-in-chief or associate editor for leading international journals, including Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, Water Resources Research, and Journal of Hydrology. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and recipient of multiple national and international awards. |
 Professor Giuseppe Carlo MARANO | [Presentation Title] Human–AI Synergy in Structural Engineering: Why Interdisciplinarity is no Longer Optional Prof. Marano is a well-known structural engineer with international recognition for his research and expertise in structural optimization of new and existing buildings and bridges, identification and characterization of bridges and structures, and seismic protection. He is a global expert in the practical application of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques in structural engineering. Currenly he is the main chair of the first conference ARTISTE2025 (Artificial Intelligence in Structural Engineering) and is the founder and president of the International Association of AI for Structural Engineering |
 Professor Satish NAGARAJAIAH | [Presentation Title] Sparse Structural System Identification Algorithms: Data-Driven and Physics-Informed Models Prof. Nagarajaiah is a Professor of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at Rice University, USA. He is internationally recognized for his research contributions in dynamics, isolation, adaptive structures, sensing, and sparse system identification. His research focuses on the critical intersection of algorithmic innovation and practical application, with a current emphasis on data-driven, physics-informed models using ML and AI to solve challenging forward and inverse problems in structural engineering. He has published over 400 papers and authored two books. He has supervised numerous PhD students, many of whom now hold faculty positions at prominent universities worldwide. His seminal contributions have been recognized by the 2025 ASCE George W. Housner Medal and the 2020 ASCE Nathan M. Newmark Medal. An elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and a Distinguished Member of ASCE, he leads as Editor of Structural Control and Health Monitoring by Wiley, and as Senior Editor of Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing by Elsevier. |
 Professor TAO Guangming | [Presentation Title] Intelligent Fiber Devices and Equipment Prof. Tao is a Professor, Deputy Director of the Institute of Medical Equipment Science and Engineering, Director of the Research Center for Intelligent Fiber Devices and Equipment, the awardees of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, and "THE XPLORER PRIZE" from the New Cornerstone Science Foundation. Devoted to interdisciplinary research on intelligent fiber devices and equipment technology, including zero energy consumption thermal management new materials, intelligent fibers and fabric space, and minimally invasive medical fiberbots, he has published more than 140 articles in academic journals such as Science, and holds 50 granted patents as the first inventor (25 licensed/transferred). Leading his research team to address key issues in industrial technological innovation, he established the world’s first production line for metafabric. Relevant technological research has made significant contributions to multiple national strategic demand areas. |
 Professor YANG Jie | [Presentation Title] Thermal-hysteresis-encoded Waveguide Tunability via Phase-change Phononic Crystal Prof. Yang is a Distinguished Professor in the School of Engineering, RMIT University, Australia. His main research interests include advanced composite structures, mechanical metamaterials, structural stability and dynamics, CNT/graphene reinforced nanocomposites, smart structures and control. He has authored 3 books and over 500 publications including 390 journal papers which have so far attracted over 32000 Google Scholar citations with h-index 99 and more than 26700 Web of Science citations with h-index 90. He is the Highly Cited Researcher (Cross Field) in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2025 by Clarivate Analytics and is named by Australian Research Magazine as the Global Field Leader in Mechanical Engineering in 2020, Australia’s Research Field Leader in Mechanical Engineering in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, in Structural Engineering in 2021 as well as in Acoustics and Sound in 2023. Prof Yang is currently the Lead Editor-in-Chief of Engineering Structures and serves the editorial boards of many other international journals. |
 Professor ZHENG Yu | [Presentation Title] Urban Computing: Enabling Spatio-temporal Intelligences in Cities Prof. Zheng is the Vice President and Chief Data Scientist of JD.COM, and the president of JD Intelligent Cities Research. Before Joining JD.COM, he was a senior research manager at Microsoft Research. He is also a chair professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and an adjunct professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Zheng had published over 200 quality papers at prestigious conferences and journals and received over 6,6000 citations (H-index 116). He founded the research field of urban computing, which had been widely followed by world-class scientists. His monograph published by MIT Press becomes the first text book of this field. He was the Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology (2015-2021) and had served as the program co-chair of ICDE 2014 and CIKM 2017. He was a keynote speaker of AAAI 2019, KDD 2019 Plenary Keynote Panel and IJCAI 2019 Industrial Days. He received SIGKDD Test-of-Time Award twice (in 2023 and 2024) and SIGSPATIAL 10-Year-Impact Award four times (in 2019, 2020, 2022, and 2024). He was named one of the Top Innovators under 35 by MIT Technology Review (TR35), an ACM Distinguished Scientist (2016), an IEEE Fellow (2020) and an ACM Fellow (2026), for his contributions to spatio-temporal data mining and urban computing. |
