任杨教授，钟志杰教授介绍了香港中文大学，尤其是自动化与计算机辅助工程系及研究生招生情况，廖维新教授做了题为“Vibration control and energy harvesting using smart materials”的学术报告。

报告内容摘要：
When engineers or scientists use the prefix "smart" they are talking about a system that seems to be able to respond automatically to changes in its surroundings like a living thing.? So smart materials are those that alter their shape, stiffness or other properties when they are subjected to changes in temperature, electrical or magnetic field. By utilizing these adaptive features, smart materials can be built as sensors and actuators. Integrating with controllers, such systems perform work like nerves, muscles, and brains in our human bodies. Smart materials are being increasingly used for suppression of vibration in helicopter rotor blades, noise attenuation for submarines, ride comfort improvement for automobiles, health monitoring and control of civil structures, and various medical applications.? This seminar will introduce the basic characteristics of smart materials such as piezoelectric materials and magneto-rheological (MR) fluids as the elements in intelligent systems. The fundamental concepts of several smart material technologies such as piezoelectric energy harvesting from vibration, active-passive hybrid vibration control, and semi-active control via MR fluid dampers will be presented. Some key results regarding design and fabrication of smart devices, analysis and implementation of integrated systems will be shown. Their potential applications to automobiles and trains, computer hard disk drives, wireless health monitoring of bridges, and medical devices will also be discussed.

廖维新教授简介：
Prof. Wei-Hsin Liao received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in May 1997 from The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, USA. At Penn State University, he received the Inventor Incentive Award and Graduate Research Award. Since August 1997, Dr. Liao has been with The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was the Program Chair for the International Symposium on Smart Structures and Microsystems in 2000. He has been a member of the International Organizing Committee of the International Conference on Adaptive Structures and Technologies (ICAST) since 2000. He has also served in the program committees of the Active and Passive Smart Structures and Integrated Systems, Damping and Isolation conferences in the SPIE International Symposium on Smart Structures and Materials since 2004. Dr. Liao has been a Principal Investigator of several projects supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and Innovation and Technology Commission, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. His research has led to publications of over 75 technical papers in international journals and conference proceedings, two US patents and two other US patent applications. He received the T A Stewart-Dyer/F H Trevithick Prize, awarded by the Railway Division of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) in 2006. Dr. Liao is a Fellow of IOP, and an active member of ASME, IEEE, and Sigma Xi. He is an elected member of Technical Committee on Vibration and Sound (TCVS) of the ASME. He has served as a reviewer for various leading journals. Dr. Liao currently serves as an Associate Editor of Shock and Vibration (IOS journal), and on the Editorial Board of Smart Materials and Structures (IOP journal). His current research interests include Smart Materials and Structures, Vibration Control, Mechatronics, Precision Machinery, and Medical Devices.