On July 17, the list of winners for the 2023 Xplorer Prize were announced, with 50 young scientists being granted the honor. Among them was Tao Fei, a professor from the School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering of Beihang University.
Tao Fei, professor and Ph.D. supervisor of the School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering of Beihang University and special professor of Intelligent Manufacturing for the Ministry of Education (2019), currently serves as the executive vice dean of Beihang International Research Institute for Multidisciplinary Science, deputy director of Beihang Party Committee Talent Office, and member of the National Intelligent Manufacturing Expert Committee. Having devoted himself to the study of intelligent manufacturing, digital engineering and digital twin related theory, technology and application for more than 20 years, he has cultivated 12 doctoral and 37 master's degree graduates in the field of intelligent manufacturing and won the second prize in Beijing Teaching Achievement Award (ranked 1st) for his interdisciplinary talent training methods in intelligent manufacturing. He has presided over multiple projects of the national key research and development program, the key international cooperation program of National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the national leading talents program. He invented the technology and device for data acquisition and transmission of soft-hard-integrated intelligent manufacturing, proposed a five-dimensional digital twin model, led his team to explore and establish the digital twin theory, technology and standard system together with domestic and foreign scholars, published a series of three English monographs and the first digital twin review article in Nature in 2019, and founded the international journal Digital Twin. As the person in charge, he led his team to win the second prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award (2020), the first prize of Natural Science Award of the Ministry of Education (2022), the first prize of China Machinery Industry Technology Invention Award (2022), and the China Youth Science and Technology Award (2016). He published five monographs as the first author and 25 ESI highly-cited papers in journals such as Nature. His relevant papers won the Best Paper Award of the SME (Society of Manufacturing Engineers) Journal of Manufacturing Systems (JMS) (2023), China's 100 Most Influential Domestic Academic Papers (2022) and China's 100 Most Influential International Academic Papers (2022), and the 7th Excellent Scientific and Technological Papers of China Association for Science and Technology (2022), while he himself was selected the highly-cited scholar by Clarivate Analytics and Chinese highly-cited scholar by Elsevier for four consecutive years and the global top 20 most influential scholar in Intelligent Manufacturing by SME (2021).
Established in 2018, the Xplorer Prize has funded 248 young scientists from 90 research institutions in 26 cities with an average age of 41 in the past five years. In 2021, Professor Zhao Weisheng from the School of Integrated Circuit Science and Engineering and Professor Chen Huawei from the School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation of Beihang University won the award in the fields of information and electronics technologies and advanced manufacturing respectively. Professor Zhao Lidong from the School of Materials Science and Engineering won the award in the field of advanced interdisciplinary studies in 2022.
Reviewed by Li Jianwei
Edited by Jia Aiping
Translated by Zhang Anqi
