Abstract：

The progress of humankind has been marked by five main waves of innovation. Each wave has transformed our industries and societies, yet is also coupled with the consumption of resources, pollution, and energy/water shortage. In contrast, honed by billion years’ evolution, nature has developed extraordinary principles which are characterized with green energy and resilience.

This talk focuses on how the rational control of topological effect, which is normally overlooked in the conventional engineering domains, will fundamentally change the fluid and thermal transport and trigger new applications. In particular, I will discuss our recent progress in the exploration of nature-inspired topological structures for various implementations such as water droplet based electricity generation, directional water transport and harvesting, thermal management. 

Biography：

Prof. Zuankai Wang is a professor and Associate Dean in the College of Engineering at the City University of Hong Kong. He earned his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Jilin University in 2000 and Master degree in Microelectronics from Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2003, and Ph. D. degree in Mechanical Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2008. After one year postdoc training in Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University, he joined in the City University of Hong Kong in September 2009 as an assistant professor.  He is the founding member of Young Academy of Science of Hong Kong, fellow of the International Society of Bionic Engineering and Changjiang Chair Professor.  His work has been published in Nature Physics, Nature Materials, Nature Communications, Science, Science Advances, and Physical Review Letters and highlighted in Nature News, Nature Physics Views & Views, New York Times and Guinness World Records. He has won many awards including the World Cultural Council Special Recognition Award, Outstanding Research Award and President’s Lectureship at the City University of Hong Kong. The Ph.D. students he supervised have won a number of prestigious awards including Young 1000 Talent Plan, MRS Graduate Student Gold Award, MRS Graduate Student Silver Award, Hiwin Doctoral Dissertation Award, Hong Kong Young Scientist Award.