Cardiff School of Engineering’s Professor Roger Falconer (now Emeritus Professor of Water Engineering since October 2018) and Founding Director of the Hydro-environmental Research Centre (1997-2015), has been elected a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), in the biennial election in November 2019 of all CAE Members. Roger was informed by the President of CAE of his election to the Academy, in recognition of his ‘distinguished contributions to hydraulic engineering and to the promotion of China-UK exchanges and cooperation in the field’. Membership of the CAE is the highest academic title in engineering science and technology in China and is a lifelong honour, with election being made by the existing members of the CAE. Foreign members are non-Chinese citizens who are distinguished and recognised for their achievement in engineering.
Roger first started collaborating with China through Tongji University in 1981; since that date he has continuously collaborated with several top (Chinese) universities and government institutes, with the following being some examples of notable collaborations: (i) Tongji University: design formulations for harbours and marinas to maximise water quality; (ii) Tsinghua University: development of a software tool CONTANT for the design of water supply disinfection tanks; (iv) Tianjin University and Municipal Government: modelling Bohai Bay and Sea as a system, with the objective of balancing economic development of the Bay for increased shipping, against minimising the impact on the coastal environment; (v) Wuhan University: development of new formulations for the stability of people and vehicles in floods; etc. Roger has also published extensively with Chinese co-authors (e.g. in 116 of 206 journal papers to-date) and has been appointed Honorary Professor at several Chinese universities, such as: Tongji, Tianjin, Sichuan and China’s Institute of Water and Hydropower Research.