scientist (Humboldt Fellow) at the Institute of Theoretical Geodesy at Bonn University, Germany (1996–1997).

In 2007, Dr. Yang was honored as an “Academic Member of the Chinese Academy.” He is co-author of three monographs and the author of two monographs and more than 200 papers. He has also received two items of the second order national progress awards of science and technology and one item of the third order national nature science progress award.

ZHOU JI, president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), specialized in mechanical engineering. He graduated from Tsinghua University in 1970 and received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1984. A professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Dr. Zhou successively served as president of HUST, director-general of the Hubei Provincial Department of Science and Technology, mayor of Wuhan city, and minister of education. He was elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 1999. During his career, Dr. Zhou was actively involved in research and development of optimal design, computer-aided design (CAD), and numeric-control (NC) technology. He advanced the algorithm of direct interpolation for NC machining and the algorithm of monotonism analysis for optimization. He and his team developed NC equipment and software packages on mechanical CAD, which have been widely used in the fields of machinery, aeronautics, astronautics, and energy. Dr. Zhou has written 11 books, published more than 200 papers, and has been honored several times with the State Award for Science and Technology Progress.