On December 27, Professor Xiaodong Huang from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Engineering at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia, was appointed as an adjunct professor at Central South University. The appointment ceremony and academic lecture were held in the International Lecture Hall on the Railway Campus. Attending the ceremony and lecture were Professor Helai Huang, Dean of the School of Traffic and Transportation Engineering; Li Yuan, Deputy Secretary of the School’s Party Committee; Yao Song, Director of the School’s Professor Committee; Liu Xiang and Li Yingli from the High-Speed Train Research Center; along with over a hundred representatives of faculty and students. The appointment ceremony was presided over by Deputy Secretary of the School’s Party Committee, Li Yuan.

During the appointment ceremony, Deputy Secretary Li Yuan introduced Professor Xiaodong Huang’s background. Dean Huang Helai delivered a welcome speech and read and presented the letter of appointment. Professor Huang expressed his gratitude for being appointed as an adjunct professor at Central South University, stating that he would engage in in-depth cooperation and exchanges with the university to contribute to the advancement of transportation engineering disciplines, the manufacturing and optimal design of large-scale equipment, and the development of China’s rail transit industry.

Following the appointment ceremony, Professor Xiaodong Huang delivered an academic lecture titled “Engineering Dispersion Characteristics of Photonic and Phononic Crystals by Topology Optimization.” The lecture introduced the floating projection structure topology optimization method, as well as schemes for bandgap regulation of phononic/photonic crystals, Dirac cone regulation, and topological insulator design based on topology optimization. These can be applied to the optimal structural design of rail transit equipment and the control of acoustic/elastic waves. Simultaneously, Professor Huang has actively explored the manufacturing and application of multifunctional materials. At the conclusion of the lecture, Professor Huang interacted with the attending faculty and students.

Profile: Xiaodong Huang is currently a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Engineering at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. He received his master’s degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1999 and his Ph.D. from Swinburne University of Technology in 2004, joining RMIT University in Australia the same year. He returned to Swinburne University of Technology as a professor in 2017. He currently serves as an editorial board member for international journals such as Advances in Engineering Software and as a project review expert for the Australian Research Council. His awards include the RMIT Research Excellence Award, the Australian Academy of Science Young Researcher Award, the Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship, the RMIT Teaching Excellence Award, the ARC Future Fellowship, the Swinburne Research Excellence Award, and the Research Team Award. His main research focuses on the theory and application of structural topology optimization and the inverse design of mechanical-acoustic-optical materials and metamaterials. Professor Huang is the original creator of the current Bi-directional Evolutionary Structural Optimization (BESO) method and the floating projection topology optimization method. He has published one monograph and over 180 SCI-indexed papers, cited more than 11,000 times with an H-index of 51. Since 2019, Professor Xiaodong Huang has engaged in a series of exchanges and collaborations with the School of Traffic and Transportation Engineering at Central South University, including joint graduate training, research project cooperation, and academic exchanges, achieving excellent results.

First Review: Xiaoli Tang  Second Review: Shangjun Wang Third Review: Yuan Li / Yong Peng