The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) announced this September that Prof. Longhua Hu from State Key Laboratory of Fire Science (SKLFS), University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) was granted the Excellent Young Scientists award of 2014 for his outstanding research on wind-blown pool fire behavior, facade fire characteristics as well as tunnel fire dynamics and engineering.
Prof. Longhua Hu got his bachelor degree (2001) and Ph.D. degree (2006) from USTC, and then worked as postdoctoral fellow (2006-2008), associate professor (2008-2014). He has been promoted to be professor of USTC in December 2014. He has authored over 140 refereed journal and conference papers, 7 patents and 2 books. His major contributions to the fire community include: (1) Quantified the evolution of heat feedback in pool fires with cross air flow and proposed theories to scale its burning behavior and flame characteristics; (2) Revealed the intermittent flame ejection behavior from opening of under-ventilated compartment and carried out comprehensive investigations on facade fire behaviors in different boundary conditions (facing wall, side wall and reduced ambient pressure at high altitude); (3) Quantified the entrainment at the smoke-air layer stratification interface, the smoke layer characteristics as well as the criteria for the stability of stratification in tunnel fire with longitudinal ventilation, and applied these findings for tunnel fire safety engineering.
Prof. Longhua Hu serves as Editorial Board Member of Fire Technology. He had also been awarded the JSPS Fellowship (2012), the Young Faculty Career Award of USTC Alumni Foundation (2012), the LuJiaXi Youth Talent Award of Chinese Academy of Science (2012), the Fellow of Youth Innovation Promotion Association of Chinese Academy of Science (2011), the New Century Excellent Talents in University of Ministry of Education of China (2009) and the Excellent Ph.D. Thesis Award of Anhui Province of China (2009).
The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Excellent Young Scientists Award was set up by NSFC since 2012 to encourage excellent young scientists (less than 38 years old for male and less than 40 years old for female). Only 400 scientists are selected from all subject of natural science each year. Prof. Longhua Hu is the first one granted this award from the fire research community.