It is hard to imagine something as scientifically and visually beautiful as droplets and bubbles. In nature, plants and animals use droplets and bubbles to survive, evolve, and flourish. Beetles in the Namib Desert drink from droplets on their backs collected from the fog-laden wind, pistol shrimps utilize collapsing bubbles to stun prey, and pathogenic microbes spread through tiny droplets seeking new hosts.

This talk focuses on how to well as designing and constructing nature-inspired innovative surfaces with high scalability and durability that impart the efficient conversion and utilization of kinetic energy, latent heat and surface tension of droplets and bubbles for various high-performance applications such as water energy harvesting, thermal cooling and underwater adhesives.

Biography

Prof. Zuankai Wang is currently Chair Professor of Nature-Inspired Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and concurrently serves as Associate Vice President (Research & Innovation). Professor Wang received his B.S. degree from Jilin University in 2000, M.S. degree from the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2003, and Ph.D. degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2008. After a one-year postdoctoral training at Columbia University, he joined the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) as Assistant Professor in 2009 and was promoted to Chair Professor in 2021. He was the Associate Dean of the College of Engineering from 2019 to 2022 and the founding Deputy Director of Research Centre for Nature-Inspired Engineering from 2021 to 2022 at CityU. He is currently the Executive Editor-in-Chief of Droplet journal (Wiley), and Associate Editor and Advisory Board Member for ten journals (Langmuir, Advanced Engineering Materials, iScience, Journal of Bionic Engineering and others).

Professor Wang is a founding member of the Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences, Croucher Senior Research Fellow (2023), RGC Senior Research Fellow (2022), Highly Cited Researcher (Cross-field) recognized by Clarivate (2022), Fellow of the International Society of Bionic Engineering, and Changjiang Chair Professor conferred by Ministry of Education of China (2016). His work has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records and two inventions have won the International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva Gold Medal and Gold Medal with Congratulations of Jury, respectively. He has received many awards including the BOCHK Science and Technology Innovation Prize (2022), Green Tech Award (2021), Xplorer Prize (2020), Hall of Fame (Advanced Engineering Materials, 2019), 35th World Cultural Council Special Recognition Award (2018).