News
Recent activity, talks, and conferences. Reverse chronological.
-
May 2026Passed Ph.D. candidacy exam
Successfully defended my Ph.D. candidacy proposal, “Next-generation Surrogate Modeling Strategies for Complex Dynamical Systems,” at the University of Notre Dame. Grateful to my advisor Prof. Patrick Brewick and committee members Prof. Ahsan Kareem, Prof. Alexandros Taflanidis, and Prof. Ryan McClarren for their feedback and guidance.
-
January 2026UPR–ND Winter School for Scientific AI
Attended the 2026 UPR–ND Winter School for Scientific Artificial Intelligence at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez. Delivered an applied tutorial, “Neural Operators for Engineering Applications”, presented a research poster, and mentored undergraduate hackathon participants. SAI coverage.
-
June 2025Preprint: full-field DeepONet for structural dynamics
Submitted “A Full-field Extended Deep Operator Network as a Spatio-temporal Surrogate for Structural Dynamics” to Engineering Structures; preprint posted on arXiv [2506.11761]. The paper introduces a DeepONet variant that returns multiple full-field dynamical outputs in a single pass and benchmarks it on a cable-stayed bridge model.
-
May 2025EMI 2025 — conference talk
Presented “Using deep operators to create spatio-temporal surrogates for dynamical systems under uncertainty” at the Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference (EMI 2025), Anaheim, CA. Especially meaningful to have both my master's advisor Prof. Ning Li (Tianjin University) and my Ph.D. advisor Prof. Patrick Brewick (Notre Dame) there together — it means a lot.
-
January 2025
SAI Fellowship — University of Notre Dame
Selected as a Scientific Artificial Intelligence (SAI) Fellow at Notre Dame. The fellowship supports interdisciplinary work integrating AI methods with structural-engineering applications.
-
September 2023
Joined Notre Dame for Ph.D. studies
Began doctoral studies in Civil Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, joining the Brewick Group under Prof. Patrick Brewick.
-
October 2022Joined Shenzhen University as Research Assistant
Joined the Key Laboratory for Resilient Infrastructures of Coastal Cities at Shenzhen University as a full-time Research Assistant with Prof. Weixin Ren. Worked on denoising calibration of MEMS accelerometers using generative adversarial networks and on instrumentation for tunnel-disease-detection vehicles, under the National Key R&D Program of China (2019YFB2102702).
-
June 2022M.S. defense — Tianjin University
Defended master's thesis, “Research on Control Method for Real-time Hybrid Simulation Based on Reinforcement Learning”; graduated with honors (Summa Cum Laude) from Tianjin University. The work was published in Structural Control and Health Monitoring: N. Li, J. Tang, Z.-X. Li, S. Gao, “Reinforcement Learning Control Method for Real-time Hybrid Simulation based on Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient Algorithm” (co-first author).
-
January 2022
Visiting Master Student at NTU Singapore — CSC Scholarship
Began a research visit to the LIFT Laboratory, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, with Prof. Yuguang Fu. Funded by the China Scholarship Council under the International Cooperation Program for Innovative Talents (Grant No. 202106250142). Project: reinforcement-learning control of a semi-active tuned mass damper for human-induced footbridge vibration (MOE AcRF Tier 1 RS04/21).