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Professor Hao is John Curtin Distinguished Professor and Australia Laureate Fellow in the School of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at Curtin University. He received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, majoring in Structural Engineering with minors in Mathematics and Strong Motion Seismology. His research interests are structure protection against earthquake, blast and impact loads, as well as structural condition monitoring for effective engineering asset management, through the development and application of new sustainable and durable construction materials, and development and application of new structural designs. He has published over 700 research papers in international journals. His publications have received over 30000 citations with H-index 88, been adopted in design codes and applied in many construction projects around the world. He had provided consulting services to many private and government organizations around the world. He has received over 40 research awards, recent awards include the Nishino Medal from East Asia-Pacific Structural Engineering and Construction Congress in 2022, Research Award from Concrete Institute Australia in 2021, Charles Bubb Medal from Australian Earthquake Engineering Society in 2019. He is the president of International Association of Protective Structures, served as the president of Australian Society of Earthquake Engineering from 2010-2013, and Australian Rep in International Association of Earthquake Engineering from 2013 to 2021, and advisory committee member of Australian Network for Structural Health Monitoring. He is a distinguished fellow of International Association of Protective Structures, fellow of Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, American Society of Civil Engineers, and International Association of Engineering Asset Management.
Professor Nawawi CHOUW was Director of the University of Auckland Centre for Earthquake Engineering Research in New Zealand. Before joining the University of Auckland, he worked at universities in Germany, Japan, and Australia. He received his doctorate in Civil Engineering from the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. He has twice been awarded the Gledden Fellowship of the University of Western Australia, the Fritz-Peter-Mueller Prize of the Technical University of Karlsruhe, Germany, the Best Research Award of Chugoku Denryoku Research Foundation, Japan, and received two recognitions for excellence in research supervision from Chinese Scholarship Council. He has been invited by the Chinese Ministry of Education, the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, the Qatar Science Foundation, the SA National Research Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, and other European Research Institutions to assess applications and the international standing of peers. He has published > 440 publications including > 140 international journal papers. He was invited to teach at several universities in Europe, China, and Japan. He was guest editor of several journals, e.g., Protective Structures, Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering. He is associate editor of Materials, Shock and Vibration and Frontiers in Build Environment – Earthquake Engineering, Innovative Infrastructure Solutions and serves on the editorial board of several international journals, e.g., Engineering Structures. He was a visiting and guest professor at several universities in China, Germany, Canada, Australia, Serbia, Macedonia, and Japan.
Weidong Zhu is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the founder and director of its Dynamic Systems and Vibrations Laboratory and Laser Vibrometry and Optical Measurement Laboratory. He received his double major BS degree in Mechanical Engineering and Computational Science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1986, and his MS and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Arizona State University and the University of California at Berkeley in 1988 and 1994, respectively. He is a recipient of the 2004 National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He has been an ASME Fellow since 2010, and has served as an Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Vibration and Acoustics and the ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control, and as a Subject Editor of the Journal of Sound and Vibration and Nonlinear Dynamics. His research spans the fields of dynamics, vibration, control, structural health monitoring, renewable energy, metamaterials, and involves analytical development, numerical simulation, experimental validation, and industrial application. He has published over 310 SCI-indexed journal papers in these areas and has eight issued U.S. patents. He is a recipient of the 2020 University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Research.