Professor Yanfeng Shen of the University of Michigan- Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute received a second-prize Candle Light Award in 2018 by SJTU, according to the official list published by the university recently. The Candle Light Award was established by SJTU to encourage and commend outstanding young teachers for their contribution to undergraduate education, as part of its efforts to become a world class university.
Professor Shen has taught undergraduate courses including “Introduction to Engineering” and “Solid Mechanics” at JI for the past two years. He spends much efforts to equip students with rigorous and solid engineering literacy, systematic scientific analysis ability, and brave innovative mentality. Strong efforts are also taken by the professor to integrate the teaching content of “engineering science and technology” with “technology exchange” and introduce the frontier science and technology into the classroom, with innovative reform of the course structure and favorable measures for the cooperation management of the multi-person teaching team.
For two consecutive years, Professor Shen has taken part in the preparation of the design expo of student projects, creating opportunities for the freshmen to showcase their outstanding achievements to teachers, students, business representatives and the society. The design expos receive extensive attention in and out of the university with widespread media reports from home and abroad. Excellent works of his students taking the course of “Introduction to Engineering” were also invited to attend the exhibition held during the first COMAC International Science and Technology Innovation Week.
Brief Biography of Professor Yanfeng Shen
Yanfeng Shen is an assistant professor and special associate researcher at the University of Michigan – Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute. He received his Bachelor’s degree in engineering mechanics from Wuhan University in 2010 and Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of South Carolina in 2014. Thereafter, he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan. In 2016, he started his tenure-track faculty position at the Joint Institute. His research interests cover structural health monitoring; guided waves; nonlinear ultrasonics; active materials and smart structures; and advanced computational mechanics. He is an active researcher in his area and has published 1 book chapter, 15 peer-reviewed journal articles, and over 26 conference papers. He currently serves as a syndic for the equipment structural health monitoring and prognostics society of China. He is also a member of the Nondestructive Structural Monitoring and Diagnosis (NSMD) Technical Committee (TC) NDE Engineering Division (NDEED) under the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He received the IMECE best conference paper award from ASME in 2017 due to his contribution on the topic of nonlinear ultrasonic scattering. He is also an invited reviewer for numerous top tier journals in his research field, such as Smart Materials and Structures, Structural Health Monitoring – An International Journal, Ultrasonics, etc.
