Assistant Professor, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering
Affiliated Faculty, UMN Data Science Initiative (DSI)
Faculty Scholar, Center for Transportation Studies (CTS)
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Biography
Dr. QiZhi (“KaiChi”) He joined the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering at the University of Minnesota as an Assistant Professor in January 2022, leading the Intelligent Computational Mechanics Group. He obtained his Ph.D. in Structural Engineering and Computational Science (2018) and M.A. in Applied Mathematics (2016) from UC San Diego. Before joining UMN, he held a position as an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at San Diego State University and as a Collaborative Researcher at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), where he worked as a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Scientific Machine Learning Group from 2019 to 2021, participating in several DOE projects including PhILMs and ESMI for developing physics-informed machine learning methods. His research mainly focused on developing next-generation computational tools by combining high-fidelity scientific computing and artificial intelligence to enable effective modeling, simulation and design capabilities of complex physical systems involving multiple phases, scale lengths, and physical processes. Dr. He’s research interests also include meshfree materials modeling, fracture mechanics, topology optimization, reduced-order modeling, and deep learning for inverse problems that involve porous, composite, and energetic materials. Dr. He currently serves as an external reviewer of several international journals and funding agencies, and is an editorial board member for Computers and Geotechnics.
Education
- Ph.D. in Structural Engineering & Computational Science, University of California San Diego
- M.A. in Applied Mathematics, University of California San Diego
- M.S. in Mechanics (Computational), Dalian University of Technology
- B.S. in Engineering Mechanics (Civil Engineering), Wuhan University
Employment History
- Assistant Professor, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering, University of Minnesota, 2022-Current
- Assistant Professor (Fall 2021), Department of Mechanical Engineering, San Diego State University
- Postdoctoral Research Associate, Computational Mathematics/Scientific Machine Learning Group, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), 2019-2021
- The PhILMs ("films") Project. Collaborators: George Karniadakis (Brown), Panos Stinis (PNNL), Alex Tartakovsky (UIUC/PNNL), Amanda Howard (PNNL), Mauro Perego (Sandia)
- Energy Storage Materials Initiative. Collaborators: Panos Stinis (PNNL), Alex Tartakovsky (UIUC/PNNL)
- UQ For Complex Systems. Collaborators: Alex Tartakovsky (UIUC/PNNL), David Barajas-Solano (PNNL)
Research Interests
- Finite element and meshfree methods for nonlinear solid mechanics
- Machine learning enhanced computational mechanics
- Data-driven mechanics
- Fracture mechanics
- Multiscale materials modeling
- Reduced-order modeling
- Subsurface flow and transport
- Multi-physics modeling of geological, composite and energetic materials
- Topology optimization
- Musculoskeletal biomechanics
- Scientific machine learning for geo-mechanics & geo-sciences
- Physics-informed deep learning for inverse problems
Academic Service
Seminar Organizer:
Conference Committee Member & Organizer:
- Track chair, 2021 Mechanistic Machine Learning and Digital Twins for Computational Science, Engineering & Technology, IACM Conference, San Diego, CA, 09/2021
- Local organizing committee, Workshop on Meshfree Method and Advances in Computational Mechanics, Pleasanton, CA, 03/2019
Technical Committee and Editorial Board Membership
- Editorial Board Member, Computers and Geotechnics, 2022 - present
- Guest Editor, Special Issue: Machine Learning and Data-Driven Computing in Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering Applications, Computers and Geotechnics, 2022
Journal Reviewers:
- Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering | Computers and Geotechnics | Engineering with Computers | Journal of Computational Physics | Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization | Water Resources Research
Grant Reviewers:
- NSF Reviewer, 2023
- External Reviewer, National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT) – Fondecyt (main public fund of the Government of Chile)
Associations:
- Member of U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM), 2022-current
- Member of ASCE/EMI, 2022-current
- Member of American Geophysical Union (AGU), 2019-current
- Member of ASME, 2022-current
- Member of MRS, 2022
