Bence Kato, PhD

Assistant Professor at Shenzhen University

Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

About

Hello, Bence here! I earned my Bachelor's degree at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Civil Engineering. During my bachelor's, I focused my studies on geotechnical engineering, construction technology, and management. For my bachelor thesis, I worked with Mott McDonald to improve the design and safety of the Hungarian National Radioactive Waste Repository tunnels in Bátaapáti. In 2015 I joined The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for my journey as a PhD student. Here, I worked for a year on seismic stability of retaining walls, experimental research in soil mechanics, and then switched to numerical simulations to research seismic resilience at a city scale. During my PhD, I accumulated knowledge on a diverse collection of topics in civil engineering, programming, data science, and, most importantly, problem-solving. I have also won several awards for innovation, presentation, and best technical paper. In June 2020, I completed my PhD research and dissertation under my mentor, Professor Wang Gang, in Geotechnical and Earthquake Engineering. In December 2020 I joined the Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen as a postdoctoral researcher under Professor Wang Ying. Here, I focused my efforts on improving the design and safety assessment of offshore wind turbine support structures utilizing physics-based simulations and deep neural networks. In 2021 I won the RFIS-I fund from the National Natural Science Foundation of China for my project titled "PAILE: an AI-Powered Foundation Model for Monopile Supported Offshore Wind Turbines". As of November 2023, I am a tenure track Assistant Professor at Shenzhen University building my own team and rejuvenating the research directions I explored in my junior years. Besides securing the Shenzhen City "Peacock" Overseas Talent title I have secured multiple funding for two major directions. One on developing an Early Earthquake Warning System reliant on existing undersea optical fiber communication cables. While another on creating fully-integrated AI-powered foundation macro element models for FEM. In the past several years I have developed a serious interest in updating technology and bringing innovation into the conservative industry of civil engineering and I am looking forward to like-minded students joining my effort under an MPhil or a PhD program.

Experience

  • Assistant Professor at Shenzhen University
    Nov 2023 - Present · 2 yrs 9 mos

  • Postdoctoral Researcher at Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen
    Dec 2020 - Sep 2023 · 2 yrs 10 mos

    I am working on the design and long-term structural health assessment of Offshore Wind Turbines (OWT). My focus is on improving pile foundation modeling considering Soil-Structure-Interaction for OWTs through physics-constrained Artificial Neural Networks. Moreover, I am working on a performance based seismic fatigue calculation method for OWT structures.

  • PHD Student at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
    Sep 2015 - Jun 2020 · 4 yrs 10 mos

  • Internship at Módosék Kft.
    Jul 2014 - Aug 2014 · 2 mos