News & Updates

Xi Zhong defended her PhD thesis on August 24, 2026, becoming AIR’s fourth PhD graduate. We are grateful to Professor Lixiao Li for serving as the external examiner. Congratulations to Xi!

Professor Zhang accepted the invitation to serve as the Editorial Board Member for Communications AI & Computing.

Professor Zhang received an RGC General Research Fund award as principal investigator for research on weather-foundation-model-assisted operational storm-surge forecasting for Hong Kong.

Han Peng defended his PhD thesis on May 27, 2026, becoming AIR’s third PhD graduate. We are grateful to Professor Matthias Faes for serving as the external examiner. Congratulations to Han!

Chen Zhang defended his PhD thesis on April 15, 2026, becoming AIR’s second PhD graduate. We are grateful to Professor Michael Beer for serving as the external examiner. Congratulations to Chen!

Professor Zhang received an Environment and Conservation Fund award as principal investigator for research on a spatially interpretable learning framework for typhoon-induced coastal hazards in Hong Kong.

Wenjun Jiang defended his PhD thesis on December 18, 2025, becoming AIR’s first PhD graduate. We are grateful to Professor Ran Ma for serving as the external examiner. Congratulations to Wenjun!

Our paper Efficient unsupervised domain adaptation for crack segmentation with interpretable Fourier– Morphology blending and Uncertainty-guided self-training has been chosen as the Back Cover article of the Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering.

Congratulations to all the authors (Saheli Bhattacharya, Chen Zhang and me from AIR)!

Professor Zhang accepted the invitation to serve as the Early Career Editorial Board Member for ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems.

Professor Zhang received an RGC General Research Fund award as principal investigator for research on a physics-enhanced, neural-parameterized framework for offshore-wind-turbine typhoon risk assessment under a changing climate.

Jize and Luo attended the 6th International Conference on Uncertainty Quantification in Computational Science and Engineering held at Rhodes, Greece.

Our paper Parallel Multifidelity Design of Experiment Strategy Considering Low-Fidelity Simulation Feasibility has been chosen as an Editor’s Choice selection of the ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty Part A. The Chief Editor selects a paper from the current issue of the Journal to be featured.

Congratulations to all the authors (including Han Peng and me from AIR)!

Our PhD student Chen Zhang was selected as one of the five finalists for the 2025 EMI Structural Health Monitoring and Control Committee Student Paper Competition, held at Anaheim, CA, United States. This year’s competition features a strong turnout with 18 full paper submissions.

Chen was also selected as one of five finalists in the Structural Modeling group at the 14th International Conference on Structural Safety and Reliability (ICOSSAR 2025), held at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The competition received 55 full-paper submissions.

Congratulations to Chen on both achievements!

Our group (Jize, Chen, Han, Tianyu, and Xi) presented its work at the Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference in Anaheim, California, from May 27 to 30, 2025, and at the 14th International Conference on Structural Safety and Reliability in Los Angeles from June 1 to 6, 2025.

Congratulations to Xi, Han, and Wenjun for nailing the PQE and becoming PhD candidates!

Professor Zhang accepted the invitation to serve as the Editorial Board Member for Data-Centric Engineering.

Congratulations to Chen for nailing the PQE and becoming a PhD candidate!

We are proud to announce that our alumni Dr Dongqin Zhang has been appointed as Associate Professor at Central South University. Congratulations to Dongqin for his new position and we look forward to future collaborations!

Professor Zhang received an RGC Early Career Scheme award as principal investigator for research on rapid, error-calibrated uncertainty quantification of tropical-cyclone storm-surge risk.

Professor Zhang delivered a talk at the 2024 Symposium on Hurricane Risk in a Changing Climate held at Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, June 2-6, 2024. The talk showcased our TC-SINDy work on improving tropical cyclone simulations.

Our group (Jize, Chen, Han, and Tianyu) presented work on stochastic surrogate modeling, importance sampling, tropical-cyclone generation, and crack segmentation for infrastructure defects at the Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference and Probabilistic Mechanics & Reliability Conference (EMI/PMC 2024) in Chicago.

We are proud to announce that our PhD student Xi Zhong has won the Second-Class Best Student Paper Award in the 4th International Conference on Vulnerability and Risk Analysis and Management & 8th International Symposium on Uncertainty Modelling and Analysis ICVRAM-ISUMA 2024, held at Tongji University in Shanghai, China.

Sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the conference aimed to address the challenges of hazards, risks, and respective mitigation strategies in infrastructure systems and the built environment. This year’s conference saw the participation of 331 attendees from 21 countries. Xi presented her paper titled “Physics-based Tropical Cyclone Track and Intensity Models via Data-driven Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics” which was recognized for its excellent quality and presentation.

Congratulations to Xi for her well-earned award!

Our group (Jize, Luo, Wenjun, Xi) showcased our work on natural hazard risk assessment at the 4th International Conference on Vulnerability and Risk Analysis and Management & 8th International Symposium on Uncertainty Modelling and Analysis held at Tongji University, Shanghai, China.

Professor Zhang delivered a talk at the 2024 Engineering Structures (Asia-Pacific) Young Scientist Forum on AI in Civil Engineering. The talk showcased our work on AI-empowered natural-hazard modeling.

Professor Zhang received an Innovation and Technology Fund award as principal investigator for research on a framework for training data-limited AI models to detect building-facade defects.

Professor Zhang received an NSFC Young Scientist Fund award as principal investigator for research on physics-informed machine learning for wave-energy-converter farm modeling.

Professor Zhang showcased our work on robust crack segmentation for infrastructure defects at the Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference 2023 (EMI 2023) held at Georgia Tech, Atlanta, United States.

Professor Zhang delivered a talk at the 20th working conference of the IFIP Working Group 7.5 on Reliability and Optimization of Structural Systems (IFIP 2022) held at Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, September 19-20, 2022. The talk showcased our work on multi-fidelity surrogate modeling.