SPECIAL SESSIONS

 

Special Session 4: Smart Materials 360°: AI-Enabled Solutions from RF to Civil Structures

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The convergence of advanced materials science and artificial intelligence is dissolving long-standing performance limits across all engineering domains—from radio-frequency electronics to civil, aerospace, biomedical, and energy systems. By coupling AI-driven optimization with atomic-scale design, entirely new figures of merit—mechanical flexibility, environmental resiliency, cognitive functionality—are now within reach. This Special Session unites chemists, physicists, materials scientists, data scientists, and engineers to co-create a fast-track roadmap from laboratory discovery to cross-disciplinary deployment.
Contributions are invited across the full value chain, including but not limited to:
• Core–shell conductive polymers for conformal, body-centric RF and bio-electronic systems.
• Earth-abundant kesterite (CZTSSe) thin films for sustainable microwave absorbers, photovoltaics, and hybrid energy-harvesting surfaces.
• Ultra-thin composite membranes enabling reconfigurable apertures, pressure-tunable metamaterials, and lightweight structural composites.
• Hybrid inorganic–organic architectures for low-loss, high-power microwave devices, flexible power electronics, and solid-state batteries.
• AI-accelerated optimization, inverse design, and autonomous experimentation for materials-centric engineering solutions.
• Multifunctional antennas, sensors, actuators, and energy devices that simultaneously communicate, harvest, sense, and self-adapt in any engineering context.
We welcome both theoretical results and experimental validations that close the loop between materials synthesis, AI-guided design, and system-level performance across all engineering fields.

 

Please choose Special Session 4 to submit. Submission Link: https://www.zmeeting.org/submission/wccct2026

 

Special Session 4 Chair

   Prof. Kwok L. Chung, Guangzhou Institute of Science and Technology, China
   Email: klchung@gzist.edu.cn
   Research Areas: Kesterites (CZTSSe), Microwave Antennas and Sensors

Biography: Kwok L. Chung (Senior Member, IEEE) earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, in 2005. He subsequently directed the Civionics Research Laboratory at Qingdao University of Technology (2015-2021), leading cross-disciplinary work on structural health monitoring, and later served as Distinguished Professor at Huizhou University (2021-2024). Since September 2024 he holds a Distinguished Professorship at Guangzhou Institute of Science and Technology (GZIST). With ~250 peer-reviewed papers spanning electrical and civil engineering, his current research focuses on kesterite-based photovoltaic solar antennas, wireless sensors, and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces. Prof. Chung chairs the IEEE Qingdao AP/MTT/COM Joint Chapter, sits on the International Steering Committee of the IEEE iWEM workshop (General Chair, 2019), and is an Associate Editor of the Alexandria Engineering Journal (Elsevier). A Stanford/Elsevier World’s Top 2% Scientist in both single-year and career-long impact since 2020—the only GZIST faculty currently so recognized—he actively reviews for IEEE, Elsevier, IOP and other leading publishers.

 

Co-Chairs

   Senior Researcher Shiquan Wang, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
   Email: shiquan.wang@ntu.edu.sg
   Research Areas: Electromagnetic Sensors, Antenna Technologies, Metamaterials

Biography: Shiquan Wang received the Ph.D. degree in Electronic Science and Technology from Shandong University, Qingdao, China, in 2022. Since 2022, he has been a Research Fellow with the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His current research interests include advanced electromagnetic sensors and sensing systems, antenna technologies, microwave metamaterials, and sub-THz components.
Dr. Wang currently serves as an Early Career Editorial Board Member for Results in Engineering, and the Lead Guest Editor for a Special Issue in Sensors. He is an active reviewer for more than 25 international journals published by IEEE, Wiley, Elsevier, AIP Publishing, and IOP Publishing, including IEEE TMTT, IEEE TIM, IEEE TVT, and Applied Physics Letters. He has also served as a Session Chair at the 2024 IEEE Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference (APMC). He received the Best Paper Award at the 2024 IEEE ICEICT.

 

   Assoc. Prof. Xingye Chen, Guangzhou Institute of Science and Technology, China
   Email: chenxy@gzist.edu.cn
   Research Areas: Thin Film Solar Cells

Biography: Xingye Chen, Ph.D. is a Special-Term Associate Professor in the Department of Electronic Information Engineering, School of Intelligent Manufacturing and Electrical Engineering. He received his Ph.D. from Shenzhen University in 2024. His research focuses on novel photovoltaic thin films and devices, particularly deep-level defect passivation in Cu2ZnSn(S,Se)4 (CZTSSe) absorbers and interface engineering for high-efficiency solar cells, with applications in IoT-oriented photovoltaic energy systems. During his Ph.D., he published three first-author/corresponding-author papers in leading journals such as Nano Energy and Journal of Materials Chemistry A, demonstrating strategies like lanthanide doping and dual-cation substitution to enhance device performance. His work bridges advanced photovoltaics and energy-autonomous sensors.