Wei Shyy

Wei Shyy (Chinese: 史維) is serving as the 4th President of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) since 1 September 2018 with his acting presidency starting from 1 February 2018. He also holds concurrent appointment as Chair Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. He first joined HKUST in August 2010 as Provost.Prior to this, he was Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson Collegiate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Aerospace Engineering of the University of Michigan.He was previously employed by the University of Florida and GE Research and Development Center in Schenectady, New York. On 1 September 2018, he officially succeeded the Chinese American mathematician, Tony F. Chan, as the president of HKUST.

Born and raised in Taiwan, he received his Bachelor of Science from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan in 1977 and then went to the United States in 1979 to study at the University of Michigan where he had received a Master of Science degree in aerospace engineering in 1981. He later received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1982.

Shyy has made substantial contributions to air and space flight vehicle research and development, fluid machinery design optimization, and computational methods for complex unsteady flows. His work in flapping wing aerodynamics, surrogate-based optimization for space propulsion components and battery technologies, computational modeling for gas turbine combustor flows, cavitating and multiphase dynamics, power generation devices, biomechanical systems, and high performance materials processing are internationally recognized.

He and his collaborators were the first to:

• Identify the main sources of hydrocarbon emissions from spark-ignition internal combustion engines;
• Compute gas-turbine combustor flows for GE using 3-D Navier-Stokes equations on body-fitted meshes;
• Recognize and propose to adopt structural flexibility for micro air vehicles; and
• Offer an analytical framework to model the characteristics of glow discharge type of plasma actuator.

Shyy is a member of Board of Directors of Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation, and Board of Governors of Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.

He is also a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He has receivedawards for his research and professional contributions, including the AIAA 2003 Pendray Aerospace Literature Award, the ASME 2005 Heat Transfer Memorial Award, and The Engineers’ Council (Sherman Oaks, CA) 2009 Distinguished Educator Award. He has also served as a consultant and on a number of national and international committees to support and review numerous private and public organizations as well as higher educational institutes.His professional views have been quoted in various news media, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, the USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, the New Scientist and the U.S. News & World Report. Shyy has supervised and hosted many PhD students as well as postdoctoral fellows and visiting scholars.

He is the author or a co-author of five books and numerous journal and conference articles dealing with computational and modeling techniques involving fluid flow, biological and low Reynolds number aerodynamics, combustion and propulsion, and a broad range of topics related to aerial and space flight vehicles. He is General Editor of the Cambridge Aerospace Book Series published by the Cambridge University Press, Co-Editor-in Chief of Encyclopedia of Aerospace Engineering, a major reference work published by Wiley-Blackwell.

• Fellow of American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) & American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
• Distinguished Alumnus Award, National Tsing Hua University (2013)
• University of Michigan 2013 Alumni Merit Award for the Department of Aerospace Engineering