Kingboard Professorship in Materials Engineering

Professor Lu Yang is Kingboard Professor in Materials Engineering, and Chair Professor of Nanomechanics in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). He received his bachelor's degree in Physics (Microelectronics) from Nanjing University and PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering from Rice University, and did his postdoctoral research in the Nanomechanics Lab at MIT. Prior to joining HKU in 2022 as HKU-100 Scholar, he worked at City University of Hong Kong where he rose through the academic ranks to full Professor. In his current role, Professor Lu serves as Associate Dean (Mainland Affairs) in the Faculty of Engineering.

Professor Lu is a leading expert in experimental nanomechanics and its interdisciplinary applications in materials engineering, advanced manufacturing, and semiconductor technologies. He is recognized for his groundbreaking works on elucidating the extreme mechanical properties of crystalline solids at micro- and nanoscale, and his innovative use of nanomechanics to manipulate micro/optoelectronics and their applications in a diverse set of engineering areas.

He pioneered the discovery of ultralarge elasticity in nanoscale diamond (Science 2018), and demonstrated that the large elastic strains can fundamentally drive the changes in diamond’s electronic band structure (Science 2021), making diamond a promising candidate for next-generation semiconductor and optoelectronics. His earlier discovery of nanoscale “cold welding” has been already applied to manufacturing in automotive, battery and electronics industries. Moreover, his group is now scaling up these nanomechanical processing concepts to fabricate bulk-scale architected materials and devices through mechanical metamaterial approach.

Professor Lu has published more than 270 journal articles in peer-reviewed academic journals including Science, Nature Materials, Nature Nanotechnology etc., 2 book chapters and 7 US patents granted. He has been among Clarivate Analytics worldwide Top 1% Scientists by citations since 2023, and his research achievement is featured in university textbook and HKSAR government exhibition gallery. He presented Opening Plenary Keynote in International Conference on Diamond & Carbon Materials in 2021 and has been invited to serve as the conference Organization Committee from 2023 to 2025. He serves as Associate Editor for high-impact journal Materials Today since 2017 and sits on Editorial Board for leading journals such as National Science Review. His honorary professorships include Chair Professor of Xi’an Jiaotong University. Professor Lu is a recipient of University Grants Committee (UGC) Early Career Award 2013/14, the inaugural National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Excellent Young Scientists Fund (Hong Kong and Macau) in 2019, and the inaugural Research Grants Council (RGC) Research Fellow Scheme (RFS) 2020/21. He is an elected member of the Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences (YASHK).