Wei ShyyJP (Chinese: 史維; pinyin: Shǐ Wéi; Wade–Giles: Shih Wei) is an aerospace engineer who served as the 4th president of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) from September 2018 to October 2022. He is currently a professor emeritus of mechanical and aerospace engineering at HKUST.
Shyy served as chair of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan College of Engineering from 2005 to 2010. He joined HKUST in August 2010 to serve as the university provost. He served as the acting president of HKUST from February to August 2018, before he was officially appointed as the president of the university in September 2018.
In August 2010, Shyy joined The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) to serve as the university provost. In 2013, he additionally became Executive Vice-President at HKUST. He was appointed the fourth President of HKUST in September 2018, succeeding Tony F. Chan.[7]
In November 2021, Shyy announced that he would depart from his position with effect from October 2022, almost a year before the end of his five-year term. Shyy gave no reason for his early departure.[8]
While the societal challenges in Hong Kong were escalating to an unprecedented level in July 2019, he called for the underlying root cause of the society's reaction to the extradition bill to be identified and addressed.[9][10]
On 8 November 2019, during the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, Shyy was presiding over a graduation ceremony when he was notified of the death of Chow Tsz-lok, a HKUST student. He paused the ceremony for a period of silent mourning. Later he called for an independent enquiry into the death. Shyy was one of three university heads in Hong Kong who did not express support for the imposition of the national security law, telling reporters that as it had already become law, he had "no need" to support it.[11]
A signature view he promoted while presiding HKUST was to commit the university to addressing grand societal challenges. When COVID’s damaging impact was globally spreading in 2020, he promoted the university’s role to help find solutions in broad areas.[12] In the context of sustainability and global warming, he was an early advocate to treat university as a living laboratory, to experiment, assess and test lab-based invention and solutions. If/when successful, these innovations can be scaled up to address society-wide needs.[13] A key cornerstone for making such efforts successful is to develop system-wide, versus locally customized, cross-disciplinary pursuits. This view was a defining priority when HKUST (Guangzhou) was envisioned.[14]
Research
Shyy has made substantial contributions to air and space flight vehicle research and development, fluid machinery design optimization, and computational methods for complex unsteady flows. His work in flapping wing aerodynamics, surrogate-based optimization for space propulsion components and battery technologies, computational modeling for gas turbine combustor flows, cavitating and multiphase dynamics, power generation devices, biomechanical systems, and high performance materials processing are internationally recognized.
He and his collaborators were the first to:
Identify the main sources of hydrocarbon emissions from spark-ignition internal combustion engines;[15]
Compute gas-turbine combustor flows for GE using 3-D Navier-Stokes equations on body-fitted meshes;[16][17]
Recognize and propose to adopt structural flexibility for micro air vehicles;[18][19] and
Offer an analytical framework to model the characteristics of glow discharge type of plasma actuator.[20]
In addition, research by him and his collaborators has offered
original insight into low Reynolds number aerodynamics for small scale flight vehicles and Mars helicopter blades (due to Mars' low density atmosphere)[19][21]
comprehensive framework and tools for surrogate model-based data analytics and optimization techniques using artificial neural network, statistical techniques and diver sources of data input[22][23][24]
He is the author or a co-author of five books and numerous journal and conference articles dealing with computational and modeling techniques involving fluid flow, biological and low Reynolds numberaerodynamics, combustion and propulsion, and a broad range of topics related to aerial and space flight vehicles. He is General Editor of the Cambridge Aerospace Book Series published by the Cambridge University Press, Co-Editor-in Chief of Encyclopedia of Aerospace Engineering, a major reference work published by Wiley-Blackwell.[26] His photos on birds and insects in motion have been collected as books, entitled Flight InSight and Flapping.
^Shyy, W., and Adamson, T.C. Jr. (1983). "Analysis of Hydrocarbon Emissions from Conventional Spark-Ignition Engines". Combustion Science and Technology. 33 (5–6): 245–260. doi:10.1080/00102208308923679.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Shyy, W., and Bratten, M.E. "CONCERT – Cartesian Or Natural Coordinates for Elliptic Reacting Turbulent Flows: A Package of Two-Dimensional and Three-Dimensional Computer Code". GE Technical Information Series Report No. 86CRD187, GE Research and Development Center, Schenectady, NY.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Burrus, D. L., Shyy, W. and Braaten, M. E. (1988). "Numerical Models for Analytical Predictions of Combustor Aerothermal Performance Characteristics". AGARD Conference Proceedings No. 422: Combustion and Fuels in Gas Turbine Engine: Paper No. 25.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^ abShyy, W., Lian, Y., Tang, J., Viieru, D. and Liu, H. (2008). "Aerodynamics of Low Reynolds Number Flyers". Cambridge University Press, New York.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Shyy, W., Jayaraman, B. and Andersson, A. (2002). "Modeling of Glow Discharge-Induced Fluid Dynamics". Journal of Applied Physics. 92 (11): 6434–6443. Bibcode:2002JAP....92.6434S. doi:10.1063/1.1515103.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Shyy, W., Klevebring, F., Nilsson, M., Sloan, J., Carroll, B. and Fuentes, C. (1999). "A Study of Rigid and Flexible Low Reynolds Number Airfoils". Journal of Aircraft. 36: 523–529. doi:10.2514/2.2487.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Shyy, W., Papila, N., Tucker, P.K., Vaidynanthan, R., and Griffin, L. (2000). "Global Optimization for Fluid Machinery Applications". Keynote Paper, Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Fluid Machinery and Fluid Engineering (ISFMFE): 1–10.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Mack, Y., Goel, T., Shyy, W. and Haftka, R.T. (2007). "Surrogate Model-Based Optimization Framework: A Case Study in Aerospace Design". Evolutionary Computation in Dynamic and Uncertain Environments, Edited by Shengxiang Yang, Yew-Soon Ong, and Yaochu Jin, Springer-Verlag. 14: 323–342.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
