Kai Huang
Associate Professor of Physics at Duke Kunshan University

Dr. habil. Kai Huang received his BS in Electronic Engineering (2000) and his PhD in Physical Acoustics (2006) from Nanjing University. He did postdoctoral training (2006-2009) at Max-Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-organization. Since 2009, he started to build a research group at University of Bayreuth in Bavaria and to teach physics courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels. In 2014, he got his 'Habilitation' in physics, a scientific and pedagogic qualification for professors in Germany. From 2015 to 2019, he continued to work at University of Bayreuth as a ‘Privatdozent’. He is interested in understanding, predicting and eventually controlling the collective behavior of sand grains (i.e., granular materials) by means of lab experiments and computer simulations, in order to shed light on widespread applications such as space exploration, powder based additive manufacturing (3D printing), landslide and earthquake triggering, dune migration and transport. He is also interested in the acoustical design of opera theatres (e.g. the Bayreuth Festspielhaus of Richard Wagner), partly as a consequence of his lecture on acoustics.

Current Research Interests

My research (primarily experimental) focus on granular materials (i.e. large agglomerations of macroscopic particles) is an interdisciplinary field where physics and engineering meet. Understanding the physics of granular materials builds fundamentals for a wide range of application: From the prediction of natural disasters in such as landslide or debris flow through the enhancement of energy efficiency in industries (e.g. mining, pharmaceutics, waste water treatment) to emerging new technologies such as powder based additive manufacturing (3D printing).

More specifically, I am interested in building two 'bridges':

1. How to link particle-particle interactions to their collective behavior?
2. How to link collective dynamics in systems out of thermodynamic equilibrium to those in equilibrium?



Current Appointments & Affiliations

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