Dian-Qing Li, Ph.D., F.ASCE, professor and director of the State Key Laboratory of Water Resources Engineering and Management (Wuhan University), China, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Li pioneered the research field of reliability and risk control in hydraulic and geotechnical engineering. His innovations include developing a multilevel uncertainty characterization theory, nonintrusive reliability analysis, fully probabilistic reliability design methods, and a collaborative risk assessment theory and control framework for hydraulic and geotechnical engineering.
His research outputs have been applied to serving several large-scale hydropower and geotechnical projects in China such as the dynamic characteristics analysis of the 270-meter-high Wudongde Arch Dam and risk assessment of the pipeline network of the Central Yunnan Water Diversion Project, significantly advancing both the research and practical applications of safety evaluation and risk control of civil engineering systems. He has led over 10 consulting projects commissioned by leading industry companies. With 36 granted invention patents, 24 software copyrights, and more than 170 published SCI papers (including three ESI Hot Papers and 19 Highly Cited Papers, H-index = 56, and >8,000 citations), he was named an Elsevier China Highly Cited Researcher for six consecutive years. In 2019, he received the Outstanding Contribution Award from the International Geotechnical Safety Society, an honor bestowed on only three individuals worldwide.
Li’s research achievements have been recognized with two First Prizes in Natural Science from the Ministry of Education of China, one First Prize in Natural Science from Hubei Province, and one First Prize in Science and Technology Progress from the China Hydropower Engineering Society. He is a recipient of National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars in 2012, a member of the second cohort of China’s High-Level Innovative Talents, and an expert who received the special government allowances from the State Council of China.
He has served as an associate editor of the ASCE Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part A: Civil Engineering since 2017, earning the Associate Editor Award in 2024.
Li obtained his doctoral degree from Shanghai Jiaotong University in 2003.
