On February 17, Wu Hongwei, chair professor of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, was awarded the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Science and Technology Progress Award in Beijing. This is the first time that a Hong Kong scientist has won the Ho Leung Ho Lee Award since the epidemic three years ago, and it is also the first Hong Kong scientist to go to Beijing to receive an important scientific award after the two places emerged from the haze of the epidemic.
"I am very happy and excited. The scientific research exchange activities between the two places have finally moved from online to offline," Professor Wu Hongwei said after being awarded the Ho Leung Ho Lee Award. Attract more mainland talents to study in Hong Kong, and hope to promote scientific research results to the mainland and countries along the "Belt and Road" to help more people live a greener and safer life.
On February 15th, Professor Wu Hongwei flew from Hong Kong to Beijing to receive the Ho Leung Ho Lee Award. This is his second visit to the mainland after the outbreak of the epidemic. Offline cooperation in scientific research exchanges between the two places is eagerly restarting. He once won the second prize of the 2020 National Natural Science Award for " Constitutive Relations and Applications of State-Dependent Unsaturated Soil " , but he missed the opportunity to participate in the National Science and Technology Award Conference held in early 2021. This time, Wu Hongwei won the Ho Leung Ho Lee Award again , and finally he was able to experience this honor at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing. Mainland scholars and friends who often communicated online during the epidemic, now gathered in Beijing, made him even more lamented that Hong Kong should integrate into the construction of the Greater Bay Area as soon as possible, the scientific community in Hong Kong should work together to build an international science and technology innovation center in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, and people should communicate frequently, heart to heart will come together.
"I am very excited about this award, and I hope that this award will serve as an opportunity to let more students from the mainland know about Hong Kong's scientific research work and the strength and level of Hong Kong's universities," said Professor Wu Hongwei. He has been in charge of postgraduate education for a long time, and he is eager to seek talents from mainland students. However, many mainland talents prefer to study in the United Kingdom and the United States. In fact, Hong Kong's scientific research and education capabilities are also very good. He hopes that through winning awards in China, more mainland students can learn about Hong Kong There are also first-class universities and scientific research teams who choose to conduct research in Hong Kong.
Professor Wu Hongwei is recognized as a world-leading scholar in the field of soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering . He will serve as the president of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering from 2017 to 2022. He is the first Chinese president since the society was founded 87 years ago. It is very meaningful for him to win the Ho Leung Ho Lee Award this time. "This award, I feel, is a kind of benchmarking (benchmarking management), which means a kind of mutual recognition." Professor Wu Hongwei said that many scientists in Hong Kong have won important international science and technology awards, but the academic circles in the mainland do not know about this. Being able to win the Ho Leung Ho Lee Award for the first time is like having "mutual recognition" in the mainland, and the scientific research achievements and level have been affirmed. He said that this is not only for himself, but also for many Hong Kong scientists who are pursuing "mutual recognition" with the mainland in order to better integrate into the overall strategic situation of national technological innovation.
The state-dependent unsaturated soil constitutive relationship and its application are the results of more than 20 years of research by the team led by Professor Wu Hongwei. When Professor Wu Hongwei was studying for a doctorate in the UK, his research direction was urban underground architecture research. Most of the surface soil is in an unsaturated state, which is the carrier of all structures and slopes, and also the foundation of plant growth. Under the induction of human engineering activities and extreme climate, unsaturated soil is prone to deformation, instability and landslides and other disasters, which in turn caused huge losses to people's lives and property. After returning to Hong Kong in 1995, he found that there were very few studies on unsaturated soils in the world. At the same time, Hong Kong and many places in Southeast Asia were troubled by problems such as slope safety, so he took the basic research on unsaturated soils as his direction, starting from A fresh perspective on this important topic.
In the continuous research, Professor Wu Hongwei led the team to discover the law that the coupling of suction and stress state affects the seepage-deformation-strength of unsaturated soil , established the state-related constitutive theory of unsaturated soil, and solved the common problems under the action of climate change and engineering activities. seepage-deformation-strength coupling problem. "Advanced Unsaturated Soil Mechanics and Engineering" published by him in 2007 was the third book on unsaturated soil in the world at that time. It was appraised by authoritative journals as "unique content and a must-read book for doctoral students", and was recognized by more than 30 universities around the world. As a postgraduate course text and reference book.
"Tons of mud poured down from the top of the mountain, and the residents who hadn't recovered were buried in the building in an instant." This is the Hong Kong Civil Engineering and Development Department's review of the landslides in Sau Mau Ping, Hong Kong in 1972 and 1976 According to the description of the two accidents, a total of 89 people were killed; in 2014, the Oso landslide in Washington State, USA, caused 43 deaths, making it the deadliest accident in the history of landslides in the United States. Professor Wu Hongwei's team applied new theories to analyze the three disasters and successfully judged the occurrence of landslides. He participated in the compilation of the world's first unsaturated loose soil slope evaluation and design guide , which was used in Hong Kong, Brazil, Malaysia and other places, which improved the design and management level of unsaturated soil slopes, and helped Hong Kong to significantly reduce the landslide risk and achieve The historical record of zero casualties in the past 10 years.
Based on Professor Wu Hongwei's innovative basic research on unsaturated soil , a large number of new technologies and applications have emerged. In recent years, he has paid more attention to sustainable development, hoping to build a green and environmentally friendly new ecology for the city's "cement forest" through new technologies. In 2011, Chen Yunmin, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a professor of the School of Architectural Engineering of Zhejiang University, served as the chief scientist of the National Key Basic Research Development Program (973 Program), and invited Professor Wu Hongwei as the project leader to undertake the "Covering Barrier Water Vapor Conduction and Landfill Gas Pollution Control "Research work. Professor Wu Hongwei's team took the lead in proposing an ecological three-layer covering system , which was constructed using construction waste and natural soil, without the need for geomembrane, and achieved environmental protection, aesthetics, and carbon reduction effects. This new covering system has been applied in dry and humid climate areas, and has achieved excellent anti-seepage and air-holding functions, and successfully solved the inherent problems of geomembrane aging or tearing, soil-membrane interface slip damage, etc. in traditional covering systems, and can Promote the recycling of construction waste. The new covering system has been monitored for six years at Shenzhen's largest domestic waste landfill, and the results show that its service performance is better than the US Environmental Protection Agency's specification standards. Academician Rowe of the Royal Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Engineering pointed out that compared with traditional technologies, the coverage system has better service performance and is at the international leading level. At present, the relevant technologies have been authorized as invention patents in China and the United States, and the new covering system has been adopted in the national standard, which can replace the traditional closure covering system and effectively improve the protection level of the landfill closure project.
"China is still a developing country, and we are still carrying out large-scale infrastructure construction. We must learn from the mistakes made by Western countries in their development. For example, environmental problems caused by development may require more multiples of money to manage." , Professor Wu Hongwei said that he hopes to contribute his own efforts to create a better life for the next generation. The new unsaturated soil experimental system developed by his team has been adopted by nearly 300 research institutes, universities and government departments around the world. As people gradually get out of the haze of the epidemic, the scientific research and application cooperation between the two places has restarted. I believe in the theory and application of unsaturated soil will also play an increasing role.
The article comes from Dagong Wenhui.com
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