Rolf Mueller has studied bat biosonar from the perspectives of biophysics and bioinspired engineering for over 25 years. He received his degrees from the University of Tuebingen in Germany and was a postdoc at Yale University, and has held faculty positions in Germany, Denmark, China, and the USA. He currently serves as the Lynn professor of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech and the university's Center for Bioinspired Science and Technology. In his international activities, he has conducted research on east and southeast Asian bats for almost 20 years. His work on bat biosonar and its engineering replications has been published in some of the most reputed journals in the relevant fields such Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Physics Review Letters, Nature Machine Learning, and the Journal of Experimental Biology. He has been a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America since 2019.

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA

Accomplishing useful tasks in complex natural environments poses the highest-level challenge for autonomous systems. Among numerous other difficulties, the sensing aspect of this problem continues to elude state-of-the-art autonomy solutions. The approaches used in attempts to address these challenges are overwhelmingly based on camera imaging and LIDAR which could be seen as a three-dimensional extension of the imagining approach. Similarly, the approaches to data processing and inference often rely on vision-inspired paradigms such as the recognition of deterministic shapes. However, bat species that rely on biosonar sensing to navigate dense vegetation demonstrate that the sensory information to support these demanding tasks can be obtained from one-dimensional echo trains received at the two ears in a highly parsimonious fashion. This parsimony is evident not only in the low input data rates, but also in the small sizes of the animals brains, and the small data sets that are sufficient for bats to learn their tasks. All these abilities are even more remarkable since bats - as small mammals - are not well suited as a platform for conventional sonar sensing paradigms that rely heavily on the ability to form narrow beams with large apertures. Applying a combination of biomimetic robotics and deep-learning data analysis can shed light on how bats encode and extract the sensory information that they need to navigate in dense vegetation and explain capabilities such as location identification and passageway finding. The abilities of bats indicated the feasibility of alternative AI paradigms for dealing with complex environments that are not based on concepts from vision, but can derive all necessary sensory information from statistical invariants in signals that have to be regarded as random for lack of knowledge and can hence not support template-matching based approaches.

Seung-Bok Choi is currently working as a leading professor (碩座敎授) at Mechanical Engineering Department of The State University of New York, Korea (SUNY Korea) located in Incheon Global Campus, Korea, after retirement in 2021 from Inha University where he had worked for 30 years His main research fields are vibration control and control theory development associated with smart materials such as magnetorheological (MR) fluid and piezoelectric materials. So far, he has published over 800 articles based on Web of Science and also published more than 30 books/book chapters. He is still actively serving editorship of 20 international journals including Smart Materials and Structures, Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures and Scientific Report. He has received many distinguished awards from ASME (America Society of Mechanical Engineers), IMehE (Institute of Mechanical Engineers, England), NAEK (The National Academy of Engineering of Korea) and KAST (Korea Academy of Science and Technology). In addition, He received Order of Science and Technology Merit in 2019.

Department of Mechanical Engineering, The State University of New York, Korea (SUNY Korea)

In this talk, unique features and benefits of several smart materials which are inherently adaptable to vibration control of flexible structures and dynamic systems are briefly introduced in terms of saliant characteristics of actuators and sensors. Then, some examples of vibration control systems such as vibration control of a semi-active suspension system in vehicle engineering and effective control strategies for smart material-based actuators are discussed, followed by recent research trends for vibration control strategies which combine passive, semi-active and active methods. It is then concluded that my lifetime devoted to vibration control study over 35 years will be summarized showing themes and scholar evaluation platforms such as Google Scholar and ScholarsGPS.Com.

[Curriculum Vitae]
Since 2023 Head of the Institute for Acoustics and Dynamics, TU Braunschweig
2019 W3-Professor for Acoustics
Foundation and head of the Institute for Acoustics
2013 - 2018 W2-Professor for Vibroacoustics at Institute for Engineering Design, TU Braunschweig
Head of Vibroacoustics Group
2009 - 2013 Administration Professor for Mechanics, Institute of Applied Mechanics, TU Braunschweig
2005 - 2008 Administration Professor for Solid Mechanics, Institute for Applied Mechanics, TU Clausthal
2003 - 2013 Assistant Professor for Wave Propagation and Building Acoustics, TU Braunschweig
2001 Dr.-Ing., TU-Braunschweig
1997 - 2003 Research Associate, Institute of Applied Mechanics, TU Braunschweig
1991 - 1996 Study of Civil Engineering in Braunschweig; Degree: Dipl.-Ing.

[Boards]
since 2023 Spokesperson of the Collaborative Research Centre SFB-TRR 364 SynTrac - Synergies of Highly Integrated Transport Aircraft
since 2023 Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Acoustics Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Science
since 2022 President of German Acoustical Society (DEGA e.V.)
since 2022 Board member of DIN/VDI-Normenausschuss Akustik, Lärmminderung und Schwingungstechnik (NALS)
2019 - 2022 Vice-president of German Acoustical Society (DEGA e.V.)
since 2018 Member of the Advisory Boards des Exzellenzclusters Hearing4All

TU Braunschweig, Institute for Acoustics and Dynamics

Minimizing the negative environmental impact of technologies and developing environmentally friendly solutions is a challenging task for today's engineers. Innovations must form the foundation of life in the future. In addition to climate-impacting emissions, acoustic emissions will also play a significant role, as they are essential for the acceptance of future technologies: On the one hand, it is well known that regular long-term moderate or short-term exposure to very high noise levels can lead to health problems. These health issues can range from noise-induced hearing loss to cardiovascular problems due to stress caused by noise. On the other hand, acoustics play a key role in the assessment of product quality and comfort. Here, it is not only noise reduction that is relevant, but also the question of whether the acoustic properties of the product adequately convey the desired quality characteristics and/or whether the acoustic properties meet the customer's comfort requirements. Against this background, product development imposes new requirements on acoustic engineers: Acoustic engineering is facing a paradigm shift - from noise abatement to acoustics-oriented design.
This presentation addresses the prerequisites for implementing this paradigm shift. The role played by sensitization and awareness-raising, how a design methodology framework such as Design to Acoustics (D2A) can provide support and the importance of integration into technology design and technology assessment will be highlighted. Tailored acoustics-oriented measures and a system-of-systems inspired approach to embed D2A in a holistic design are proposed. The presentation addresses how accurate modelling, reliable simulation and insight driven assessment pave the path for acoustics-oriented design.

Shinichi Sakamoto received B.E., M.E., and Doctor of Engineering degrees from The University of Tokyo in 1991, 1993 and 1996, respectively. He is currently Professor of the Environmental Acoustic Engineering Laboratory, Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo. He has conducted research on sound field prediction of architectural spaces and urban areas by using wave-based numerical analysis, noise prediction methods especially on road traffic noise, and psychoacoustical evaluation of architectural and urban spaces. He has received awards and prizes from AIJ (Architectural Institute of Japan), ASJ (Acoustical Society of Japan), and INCE-Japan (Institute of Noise Control Engineering of Japan). He has served as President of INCE-Japan (2022-2024), Vice President of ASJ (2019-2021), and a board member of ASJ and INCE-Japan.

Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo

Road traffic noise, railway noise, and aircraft noise are major noise sources all over the world, and various measures are being developed. With the promotion of new energy sources to replace fossil fuels, wind turbine noise issues have become a growing problem since the beginning of the 21st century. In Japan, low-frequency noise from domestic heat pump water heaters has also emerged as a new noise problem in urban areas. Environmental noise is a mixture of traditional and new noise problems that have arisen due to changes in society, and appropriate monitoring and evaluation must be carried out at all times. In this talk, researches that the author's group has conducted on the prediction and evaluation of environmental noise will be introduced. On the prediction matter, the road traffic noise, which is the most familiar to our lives, is treated. For the prediction of road traffic noise, two aspects of 'sound power' and 'sound propagation' are focused on, and the determination of vehicle running noise and the characteristics and calculation methods of sound propagation for various road structures and cities are introduced. They were developed based on wave-based numerical analysis, scale model experiments and field measurement on actual road traffic flows. On the evaluation matter, noise assessment on low frequency noise, tonal noise, and audio-visual interaction effect are introduced. The studies were carried out through psycho-acoustical experiment using sound field simulation technique.

Hui Li, a professor in the filed of civil engineering, mechanics and computer science. The main topic is AI for Science and Engineering. Prof. Li is a member of China Academy of Science and member of TWAS. She is the co-authors of more than 200 Journal papers and keynote lectures. Her work has been published in Science and nature. She is the receipt of ASCE G W Housner Award Medal and R H Scanlan Award Medal.

School of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Computing, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a blooming topic today and so extensively appear in every field. In structural health monitoring and maintenance field, AI is so helpful and useful. In this lecture, the AI agent for structural health monitoring and maintenance will be introduced, which can be used for design of structural health monitoring systems, data analysis and modeling, health condition assessment, and maintenance scheme. The embedded intelligence, such as UAV, robots and edge elements with a big model, for structural health monitoring and maintenance is also introduced in this lecture. The revolution caused by AI in this field is also summarized.