Recently, the College of Engineering alumnus Gengdong Cheng (Mathematical and Theoretical Mechanics, 1964’) was awarded the 8th P. Y. Chou Prize for Mechanics for his outstanding achievement in topology optimization theory/applications and his outstanding contribution to the education of mechanics.
 
The P. Y. Chou Prize for Mechanics was set up by the P. Y. Chou Foundation to reward Chinese researchers in mechanics who have achieved significant breakthrough in theory research or have solved major key problems by use of mechanics theory or methods. The award which has been conveyed once every two years since 1997, usually selects one person or one project to award a honorary certificate and bonus.

Professor Gengdong Cheng received his B.S. in Solid Mechanics in 1964 from the Department of Mathematical and Theoretical Mechanics (which was evolved and merged to the present College of Engineering in 2006). He was elected member of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1995.

As a renowned expert in the field of engineering structural optimization, he has long been engaged in theory and methods research in engineering mechanics, computational mechanics and structural optimization. In the 1980s, he was regarded as a pioneer of modern layout optimization for his study on solid elastic sheet. The semi-analytical method for sensitivity analysis he created was confirmed by the literature for its capacity to effectively improve the accuracy. In the 1990s, in the structural topology optimization studies, Cheng’s suggestion for the correct shape of the feasible region for singular optima and his proposal of relaxation algorithm for solving singular optima was considered a milestone-significant contribution.

Over the years, with support from the National Natural Science Foundation, he studied the function-based seismic-resistant optimization structural design, the operation stability of ship lift in the Three Gorges, and reliability-based structural optimization. His recent proposal of isometric Heaviside density filtering methods and approximation planning algorithm for the sequence of structure reliability optimization has received extensive attention and recognitions at home and abroad. In 2012, he was elected as a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.