Ling Zhu has long been researching on the safety, reliability and integrity of ships and marine structures, dynamic and inelastic responses of structures under blast and impact, ship rules development, and fluid-structure interaction. He has more than 25 years' research and project management experiences in UK universities and Lloyd's Register. He has published more than 100 papers in international journals and academic conferences, was awarded more than 20 inventory patents and supervised more than 30 graduates. While working in Lloyd's Register (London) in the period from 1995 to 2013, he has worked as Lead Specialist and Project Manager on a range of rule and procedure development and risk assessment projects for ships and marine structures. He has been involved in a number of accidental damage investigations, legal and new design case assessment projects. He worked in IACS HP work groups on IACS rule /unified requirement related activities; developing guidance for future ship rules. He also provided training for internal and external clients and rule support to LR offices world-wide. In 2003, he was seconded to LR O&G for a project assisting LR O&G Global Manager working on safety regulation of Chinese offshore industry and business development of China O&G market. In 2013, he joined Wuhan University of Technology as a Full Professor of NAOE undertaking the teaching and research work and leading structural safety and integrity R&D Centre. He was appointed as the Dean of School of Transportation in 2014 and the Dean of Faculty of Transportation, Marine and Ocean Engineering in 2019. In addition, Ling also serves as the Deputy Director of Ship Mechanics Committee of CSNAME, a committee member of ISSC and Fellow of RINA. Carlos Guedes Soares is a Distinguished Professor of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, Portugal. He received his Master and Ocean Engineer degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, in 1976, his PhD degree from the Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway, in 1984, and his Doctor of Science degree from the Technical University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal, in 1991. He is also the Scientific Coordinator of the Centre for Marine Technology and Engineering (CENTEC), a research centre of Instituto Superior Técnico that is recognized and funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. He has supervised more than 75 PhD degree students and co-authored more than 900 journal papers. He has been involved in more than 60 international research projects and 20 national projects as well as the organisation of several International Conferences. He is a Fellow of SNAME, RINA, IMarEST, ASME and of the Portuguese Association of Engineers (Ordem dos Engenheiros) where he has held different responsibilities and duties for more than 30 years.
