ASCE has honored Hui Li, Ph.D., Aff.M.ASCE, with the 2023 Robert H. Scanlan Medal for contributions to advancing bridge aerodynamics and application of machine learning tools and CFD to the wind engineering field.
Li is a pioneer of smart control and bionic control. She was the first to propose an active/passive suction-blow flow control method to suppress wind-induced vibration of bridges and to reveal the control mechanism of antisymmetric vortex mode in the wake.
She is the principal investigator for more than 20 major or key projects and research grants with a total amount fund exceeding $12 million. These include Creative Research Groups in the Natural Science Foundation of China, among others. Li has conducted a broad spectrum of research that addresses the cutting-edge problems in wind engineering, bridge aerodynamics, structural health monitoring, and structural control. She is one of the leading advocates of physical machine learning (PML) for fluid mechanics and wind engineering in the world.
She also advocates the interdisciplinary study between wind engineering and structural health monitoring of long-span bridges to explore wind field around and wind effects on full-scale long-span bridges under natural winds. In addition, she is a pioneer in the research of vorticity dynamics of bridges.
The Robert H. Scanlan Medal is awarded to an individual in recognition of distinguished achievement in engineering mechanics based upon scholarly contributions to both theory and practice. The areas of achievement will generally be structural mechanics, wind engineering, and aerodynamics.
