Biography

I received my academic and professional trainings in two areas: engineering management from a business school and civil engineering from a college of engineering. Such an experience has shaped my perspectives and directions on research, teaching, and professional services. When dealing with management topics, I tend to have a problem-solving mindset, trying to understand technical details and identify engineering solutions. When dealing with engineering topics, I try to understand the broader impacts of the engineering system to our society and environment and find methods to enhance the value of the system in different sustainability dimensions. Apart from management and engineering, I am also fascinated with science especially ecology.

Overall, the goal of our research group is to develop cost-effective infrastructure and building solutions that simultaneously address some pressing concerns in our society, including climate change mitigation/adaption and biodiversity conservation.

In engineering management, our research interests lie in sustainability issues of buildings and infrastructure. Example topics include waste management, greenhouse gas emissions in infrastructure construction and operation, life-cycle cost analysis, life-cycle assessment, life-cycle social impact analysis, and the interactions of infrastructure with environments, human societies, and ecosystems. We also strive to incorporate nature-inspired and nature-based solutions into traditional infrastructure construction and operation. You may refer to Nature-based Infrastructure Solutions for more details.

In civil engineering, our research is focused on highway engineering and material science. Our group has made some breakthrough findings and key innovations in asphalt materials. We discovered the intriguing microstructures in asphalt binder at the nanoscale and connect them to a wide range of engineering properties. We developed a variety of methods to assess asphalt aging and asphalt durability. We also developed different types of environmentally-friendly concrete materials and asphalt-concrete composites. Funded by several major research grants, our team has also been working on smart road innovations, with technologies such as 3D-printing, road-based positioning for autonomous vehicles, solar roads, roads built with Modular Integrated Construction (MiC). You may refer to Highway Engineering and Material Science for more details.