Qizhi He Receives CAREER Award

Assistant Professor Qizhi ("KaiChi") He has received the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, one of the nation's most competitive honors for early-career faculty. Dr. He's CAREER project will develop a new generation of AI-enabled computational tools that tightly integrates physics-based simulation, machine learning, and high-performance GPU computing to advance the understanding and prediction of failure processes at the interface between geological materials and engineered systems. 

By embedding artificial intelligence directly into scientific simulation, the project aims to create faster, more accurate, and continuously improving models for predicting the behavior of complex engineering systems and enabling next-generation digital twins for infrastructure and geohazard applications.

The underlying computational framework will be demonstrated on geohazard-structure interaction problems—including landslides, debris flows, and other natural hazards—but is broadly applicable to infrastructure resilience, subsurface energy systems, advanced manufacturing, biomechanics, and other multiphysics engineering problems.

In the CIMS Lab (Computational Intelligence and Multiphysics Simulation) at the University of Minnesota, Dr. He and his research group leverage computational mechanics, scientific computing, and artificial intelligence (AI) to address resilience and sustainability challenges related to materials, structures, and geosystems under extreme conditions. 

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) is the foundation's most prestigious honor for early-career faculty.