Professor Installation Ceremony 2021

The Professor Installation Ceremony was held on 13 October 2021 in conjunction with the State of University Address (SOUA). The Ceremony was instituted to honour appointed full professors (whether by direct appointment or promotion) during the year. The Ceremony is intended to recognise and celebrate the appointment and achievements of the esteemed professors within the University community. We are delighted that our SCSE faculty, Dr Zheng Jianmin has been appointed as Full Professor. Congratulations!

NTU President, Professor Subra Suresh, presents the certificate to Professor Zheng Jianmin, as Prof Louis Phee, Dean-CoE, reads the citation. Congratulations to Prof Zheng on his appointment as Full Professor.

Prof Zheng was the Co-Director of Institute for Media Innovation from 2019 to 2020, and the Deputy Co-Director of Being Together Centre from 2019 to 2021. He is currently the Programme Director for the Research Pillar of Machine Learning/ Artificial Intelligence under the HP-NTU Digital Manufacturing Corporate Lab since Nov 2018.

Prof Zheng is well recognised internationally in the fields of computer aided geometric design and computer graphics. His pioneering contributions to the fields include subdivision surfaces, T-splines, curve/surface implicitization, variational mesh processing, and AI for design and reconstruction. These contributions have laid great impact in the fields of computer-aided design, finite element analysis, and manufacturing.

Prof Zheng’s research has also resulted in significant industrial impact. For example, the T-spline technology became a core modelling technique in several software products such as Autodesk Fusion 360, T-spline Maya plugin, T-splines for Rhino, and tsElements for SolidWorks. It was acquired by CAD/CAM giant Autodesk Inc. His technology disclosure on augmented/ virtual reality was exclusively licensed to Sunray Asia Pte Ltd. It is notable that in 2021 one of his technology disclosures was licensed to Virtuos Holdings with the license fee of $65,000 and an accompanying grant of $195,600.

Over the years, Prof Zheng has garnered more than $6.98 million of external grants from various sources. He has been invited to deliver several keynote talks at international conferences including three major geometric design conferences. He is currently serving as an Editor or Associate Editor for six journals including “Computer-Aided Design” (Elsevier). “The Visual Computer” (Springer) and “Computers and Graphics” (Elsevier).