According to the Award Measures of the ISBE, the nomination period for the International Bionic Engineering Award 2019 was started in the end of 2018, and a total of 21 nominations have been received by the deadline 28th February 2019 (5 for Contribution Award, 9 for Youth Award, and 7 for Student Award).

The award selection is based on evidence of research excellence and creativity in bionics and the potential contribution to the discipline development. After rigorous review by the Award Committee, Prof. Stanislav Gorb and Prof. Huawei Chen were selected as winners of Outstanding Contribution Award, Prof. Mingjie Liu and Prof. Ximin He were selected as winners of Outstanding Youth Award, and Mr. Zhengzhi Mu and Mr. Qian Zhao were selected as winners of Outstanding Student Award.

The general information of the winners was provided below, and any complaints are welcomed to submit to secretariat@isbe-online.org by 6th June, 2019.

Outstanding Contribution Award

1. Stanislav Gorb

Mr. Stanislav Gorb is a professor at Kiel University of Germany. His research works focus on biologically-inspired technological surfaces and systems.

Over the past 30 years, GORB has pioneered experimental research on a wide variety of biological adhesive and anti-adhesive systems. He has discovered functional principles of attachment devices in various animals, which has opened new ways for design of biologically-inspired technical surfaces.

He has a very impressive list of publications (more than 250 original papers and book chapters), appeared in a majority of prestigious journals (among them 3 × Nature/Nat. Comm., 2 × PNAS and 10 × Proc. Roy. Soc.). His publications have been quoted over 12000 times with several breakthrough papers quoted over 500 times.

2. Huawei Chen

Mr. Huawei Chen is a professor at Beihang University of China. His main research fields are bio-inspired functional surface, micro/nano manufacturing and fluidics.

CHEN first found the directional water transport phenomenon on the peristome surface of Nepenthes alata and ultrafast water harvesting mechanism of trichome surface of Sarracenia, which has in many cases contributed to a better understanding of biological functional principles and the according engineering applications.

In recent years, he has authored 5 books and more than 80 papers. Some of his contributions have been published in several top journals including Nature, Nat. Mater., Small, Angew. Chem., etc. His work published in Nature was the first from field of Mechanical Engineering in China.

Outstanding Youth Award

1. Mingjie Liu

Mr. Mingjie Liu is a professor at Beihang University of China. His studies focus on bioinspired design of functional gel materials from 2D surfaces and 3D networks.

LIU has proposed a new strategy to fabricate superoleophobic surfaces underwater and the study opens up a new hotspot of superwetting area in water system. His concept of embedding anisotropic repulsive electrostatics within a composite material opens up new possibilities for developing soft materials with unusual functions.

In the past decade, he has published more than 80 papers in prestigious journals such as Nature, Nat. Rev. Mater, Nat. Mater., Nat. Commun., JACS, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. and Adv. Mater.. These papers have been cited more than 3000 times with one breakthrough work cited over 500 times.

2. Ximin He

Mrs Ximin He is an assistant professor at University of California Los Angeles. She has been dedicated to establishing a world-class research laboratory that incorporates biologically inspired concepts into functional material systems for healthcare, environment, and energy applications.

Following her studies at Tsinghua University, Cambridge University and Harvard University, HE has created the first artificial homeostatic material capable of self-regulating system temperature, which has made broad impacts on self-sustainable implants and smart windows/clothes.

Some of her creative works have been published on Nature, Nat. Chem., Nat. Mater., Adv. Mater., etc. Her papers have been cited over 1300 times with wide recognition. She has also been actively organizing and chairing bioinspired materials topic focused symposiums at conferences.

Outstanding Student Award

1. Zhengzhi Mu

Mr. Zhengzhi Mu is a PhD student at Jilin University of China. He has engaged in the scientific research on biomimetic/bio-inspired functional surfaces.

In his representative works, MU figured out some special functional mechanism of butterfly wing scales, designed several high-performance functional surfaces and developed related fabrication methods toward potential applications for antireflective display, antifogging surface, and sensitive gas sensor, etc.

In the recent 5 years, he published 13 peer-reviewed research papers in international high-level journal, such as ACS Nano, Small, ACS Appl. Mater. Inter., Adv. Colloid Interfac, etc. Among these papers, 2 were featured as Front Cover, and 1 was selected as Highly Cited Paper by ESI.

2. Qian Zhao

Mr. Qian Zhao is a PhD student at Jilin University of China. He focuses on the design and fabrication of bionic intelligent soft materials and composite materials.

As one of his representative work, the fabricated bionic intelligent soft materials successfully realized the integration of structure-material-perception-driving-function and provided a new effective bionic method to solve the bottleneck problem of intelligent soft materials.

He has a strong record of 1st author publications including 19 peer-reviewed research papers and 10 patents. One of his contributions has been included in Nano Energy. He has won a number of awards and honors including national scholarship, CASC public welfare scholarship, and excellent master's thesis of Jilin province etc.