Our Team

Prof. Lihui Wang is a Professor and Chair of Sustainable Manufacturing at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. He is also the Director of the Centre of Excellence in Production Research (XPRES) — one of five national strategic research centres at KTH — and the current President of the International Academy of Engineering and Technology (AET). He previously served as President of the North American Manufacturing Research Institution (NAMRI) of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) (2020–2021) and Chairman of the Swedish Production Academy (2018–2020). Professor Wang was named one of the 20 Most Influential Professors in Smart Manufacturing in 2020 and received the SME Gold Medal in 2024.

He earned his Ph.D. and M.Sc. degrees from Kobe University, Japan, in 1993 and 1990, respectively, and a B.Sc. in China in 1982. He served as an Assistant Professor at Kobe University and Toyohashi University of Technology, Japan, before joining the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) in 1998, where he was a Senior Research Scientist before moving to Sweden in 2008. His current research focuses on real-time monitoring and control, human-robot collaboration, brain robotics, digital twins, and cyber-physical and sustainable production systems. His research has received one Best Poster Award in Switzerland (2003), five Best Paper Awards in Germany (2002), the USA (2016), Serbia (2020), Sweden (2020), and Hong Kong (2023), as well as two Outstanding Paper Awards in Mexico (2008) and the USA (2016). He also received two Best Paper Awards from the Journal of Manufacturing Systems, in 2021 and 2025. He is an eight-time recipient of NRC Institute Awards for Excellence and Leadership in R&D, Multidisciplinary Collaborative Research, Global Reach, and Outstanding People.

Professor Wang has published 12 books and edited 15 conference proceedings and 41 journal special issues. He has authored or co-authored more than 800 scientific articles in archival journals, books, and peer-reviewed conference proceedings. In addition to his research, he is actively engaged in committee and professional activities. He chaired CIRP GA 2025, CIRP CMS 2018, and FAIM 2004; served on the Grant Selection Committee for Industrial Engineering (GSC-20) of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (2004–2007); chaired the NAMRI/SME Scientific Committee (2016–2018); and served on Technical Committee 282 (Machinery Safety) of the Swedish Standards Institute (2014–2017). He is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Manufacturing Research, Journal of Manufacturing Systems, and Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing. He was Editor of the Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing (2007–2019), is an Associate Editor of the CIRP Journal of Manufacturing Science and Technology and the International Journal of Production Research, and serves on the editorial boards of 17 other international journals. He is also a Member of The Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE), a Fellow of The International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP), a Fellow of the International Academy of Engineering and Technology (AET), a Fellow of SME, a Fellow of ASME, and a registered Professional Engineer in Canada.

Ir Prof Pai Zheng (F’ASME, SM’IEEE, M’SME/HKIE, AM’CIRP) is an Associate Professor and the Wong Tit-Shing Endowed Young Scholar in Smart Robotics in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). He is also Director of the National Centre of Technology Innovation for Intelligent Design and Numerical Control (NCDC) – Hong Kong Branch. Before joining PolyU, he was a Research Fellow at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (2018–2019).

He received dual bachelor’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering (major) and Computer Science and Engineering (minor) from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 2010; a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Beihang University, Beijing, China, in 2013; and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, in 2017.

His research interests include human-robot collaboration, smart product-service systems, and industrial embodied intelligence. Prof Zheng is a Young Member of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering (HKAE) and a recipient of the Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher recognition (2025), HKIE Young Engineer of the Year Award (2025), SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award (2024), NSFC Excellent Young Scientists Fund (2024), PolyU Young Innovative Researcher Award (2023), and Baidu Top 50 AI+X Chinese Young Scholars recognition (2022). He is a Fellow of ASME, a Senior Member of IEEE and CMES, a Member of HKIE and SME, and an Associate Member of CIRP. He serves as Chair of the IEEE Hong Kong Section SMC Chapter, Co-Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Digital Manufacturing and Human-Centred Automation (DMHCA), Scientific Committee Member of SME | NAMRC, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Manufacturing Systems, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, and International Journal of Interactive Design & Manufacturing.

Dr. Liqiao XIA is currently a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HKSAR.

Previously, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Vienna University of Technology, Austria, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, and a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, USA.

He received his Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HKSAR, in 2024 and was a Visiting Graduate Student at the Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, UK.

His research interests include human-robot collaboration, smart manufacturing systems, and prognostics and health management.

He has published in peer-reviewed journals including several IEEE Transactions titles (TII, TMECH, TIM, TR, and TBD) and Reliability Engineering & System Safety (RESS).