In the afternoon of October 28th, Associate Professor Yang Zhengbao of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology was invited by the School of Mechanical Engineering to give an academic report entitled “How to find good research topics?-Powering the world from Nikola Tesla”. Prof. Yunxia Ye, Vice Dean of the School of Mechanical Engineering, presided over the meeting. Nearly 100 teachers and students from the School of Mechanical Engineering attended the presentation.

Starting from his team's latest research progress in energy harvesting and wireless power supply, Associate Prof. Yang Zhengbao pointed out that long-term impact, feasibility, and novelty of research are necessary attributes of an excellent topic. Through his own research experience, Mr. Yang told the students that they should keep an optimistic and healthy mindset when doing research, and had an in-depth discussion with them on the contents of the presentation. Prof. Yang Zhenbao's report gave the students and teachers a very good inspiration.

Dr. Zhengbao Yang, received the B.S. degree from Harbin Institute of Technology in 2012 and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Toronto in 2016. Currently, he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), a PI in the Laboratory of Intelligent Transducers and Vibrations (LITV), a Senior Member of the IEEE, and a member of the “Top 2% of Scientists in the World” of Stanford/Elsevier. “His research interests are vibration and mechatronics, focusing on developing smart structures and dynamic systems for energy harvesters, sensors and actuators. He has published more than 120 academic papers in high-impact journals such as Nature, Nature Comm., Science Robotics, Science Advances, Joule, EES, etc. He has applied for 22 Chinese and US patents.