After the 21st International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering held in Vienna (Austria), Professor Han-Lin Wang from Hunan University (China) was elected as the Chair of the Future Leaders Board-Level Committee (BLC) in the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE).
The ISSMGE is the most prestigious professional organization in the field of geotechnical engineering worldwide. The Society was founded in 1936 at Harvard University in the United States, with its first president of Karl Terzaghi, known as the Father of Soil Mechanics. The Council of the Society serves as its supreme deliberative and decision-making body. Accordingly, the Governance Hierarchy of the Society is composed of the Board Members, chairs of the Board-Level Committees (BLCs), and the chairs of the Presidential Groups. Among them, the Future Leaders BLC is tasked with building leadership development pathways for early-career and mid-career professionals and cultivating talents for the future leadership of the Society.
Han-Lin Wang is a professor in the College of Civil Engineering and Associate Dean in the National Graduate College for Elite Engineers, Hunan University. Focusing on transportation and extraterrestrial geotechnical engineering, he has published more than 80 scientific papers, including 13 in the three top journals of Géotechnique, Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, and Canadian Geotechnical Journal. He is the principal investigator (PI) on 4 national-level projects, including the Excellent Young Scientists Fund (Overseas), the National Key Research & Development Program, the National High-end Foreign Experts Program, and the General Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC); 2 provincial-level projects, including the Key Research & Development Program of Hunan Province; and 4 enterprise-funded scientific research and technical service projects. In 2024, he was awarded the Bright Spark Lecture Award from ISSMGE.
