- Dr. Liao with his students during the Spring Semester Senior Design Project Day.
Dr. Kin Liao, Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Khalifa University, has recently been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS), the only international professional organization dedicated to the aerospace community.
“Professor Liao’s Fellow election to the global aerospace organization Royal Aeronautical Society is a testimony of his leadership within the aerospace industry, and is a great honor and recognition to the Aerospace Engineering Department at Khalifa University of having top-notch leaders within its faculty,” commented Dr. Rashid K. Abu Al-Rub, Acting Chair of the Aerospace Engineering Department at Khalifa University.
With more than 25,000 members around the globe, the RAeS has a wide international network and nearly 300 industrial partners. As a fellow, Dr. Liao will have direct access to new developments in the industry and will be able to share these with KU and with his students, ensuring that knowledge sharing will not be limited to what they learn within the classroom.
“First, I’d like to thank KU for its generous support for my research over the years; second, I’d like to thank my collaborators, former and current students and postdocs for their ideas and hard work. Without their contribution, this would not be possible. So the honor is also theirs. I am really delighted to be elected a FRAeS, and I also believe that, among other things, this is an international recognition of the kind of research that we are doing here at KU,” Dr. Liao said.
The Society’s numerous events and information sharing will also provide access to the most current research in aerospace engineering and open opportunities for new ideas for future research.
For the past few years, Dr. Liao has been working on two-dimensional (2D) materials—materials that are one- or few-atoms thick—such as graphene. Together with Dr. Abu Al-Rub, and Dr. Vincent Chan, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, they have been awarded a project by ADEK to develop lightweight, high-performance electromagnetic wave shielding based on 2D materials. This kind of material may also be applied to develop functionalized coatings for high-performance filter materials to effectively trap pathogenic particles, such as viruses, in the air to enhance the safety of air circulation in a building or an enclosed space, greatly reducing the risk of people getting infected or sick. This project is especially timely as the whole world is currently in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Liao received his BSc and MSc in Engineering Mechanics, and PhD in Materials Engineering Science from Virginia Tech. Before joining KU, he was a Lee Kuan Yew Fellow and served Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore for 13 years. During his stay there he helped establish NTU’s Bioengineering Division and served as Director of NTU’s BioInformatics Research Center.
Ara Cruz
News Writer
19 May 2020
