Dr.-Ing. Lazlo Bleker Receives IASS Nervi Prize Honourable Mention

Congratulations to Dr.-Ing. Lazlo Bleker on receiving an Honourable Mention for the Nervi Prize at IASS–IWSS 2026, announced during the IASS conference’s closing ceremony on 17 September.

The research develops methods for generating structural systems, including bridge designs, from multimodal design inputs such as sketches and text, linking design intent directly to structurally informed generative models.

The recognition marks another milestone in the enduring collaboration between TUM’s Professorship of Structural Design and StructurAI Lab at HKU.

Yifan Xie Wins an IASS Hangai Prize

Congratulations to Yifan Xie on receiving an IASS Hangai Prize for his paper, “A Stock-Conditioned Generative Force Density Method Graph Machine Learning Framework for Structural Reuse,” co-authored with Lazlo Bleker and Kam-Ming Mark Tam.

Each year, IASS awards four Hangai Prizes to recognise four exceptional papers authored by young researchers under 30. Yifan was the prize recipient and primary contributor to the work, which develops a generative graph machine-learning framework for designing structures around available stocks of reusable components.

Paper: A Stock-Conditioned Generative Force Density Method Graph Machine Learning Framework for Structural Reuse [link]
Conference: IASS Annual Symposium 2026 & IWSS 2026, Turin, Italy

Dr.-Ing. Lazlo Bleker Receives DAAD Postdoctoral Award to Fund GenAI Research with StructurAI

Congratulations to Dr.-Ing. Lazlo Bleker on receiving a DAAD Postdoctoral Research Exchange Award to fund a six-month research stay with StructurAI Lab at HKU from November 2026 to April 2027.

The award will fund research on “Natively Structural Multi-Modal Generative AI for Conceptual Building and Infrastructure Design,” extending our ongoing collaboration on graph-based and generative machine learning for structural design.

Dr. Hao Liu Awarded RGC Junior Research Fellowship

Congratulations to Dr. Hao Liu on being awarded the Research Grants Council Junior Research Fellow Scheme (RGC JRFS) for the two-year project “Optimising Building Design for Disassembly and Reuse Using an Expert-Augmented AI-Driven Approach.” The competitive scheme supports outstanding early-career researchers across Hong Kong, with only 60 fellowships awarded across all disciplines in the 2026/27 exercise.

Running from June 2026 to May 2028, the fellowship enables Hao to undertake two years of postdoctoral research with StructurAI Lab at HKU, developing AI-enabled approaches to building design for disassembly, material reuse, and circular construction.

StructurAI Collaborates with Arup on AI Design Platform

StructurAI has begun a collaboration with Arup on AI Design Platform [#025-2025], a project commissioned by the Architectural Services Department (ASD) of the Hong Kong Government. Prof. Kam-Ming Mark Tam will serve as Scientific Advisor, contributing to the development of AI-enabled workflows for architectural and engineering applications.

The project includes work on agentic AI workflows and graph-based building energy prediction. As part of the collaboration, Our PhD candidate Xinlong Yang will undertake a summer internship at Arup from July to August 2026, supporting the project’s research and development activities.

Bamboo Scaffold AI Research Awarded RGC Early Career Scheme Grant

Kam-Ming Mark Tam has been awarded a Research Grants Council (Hong Kong) Early Career Scheme (ECS) grant for the project “AI-Assisted Digital Twin of Bamboo Scaffold for Structural Assessment & Repair Using Transfer Physics-Informed Graph Learning.”

The three-year project, funded at HK$1.227 million, will develop graph-based and physics-informed AI methods for the structural assessment, monitoring, and repair of bamboo scaffolding systems.

ETH Silver Medal Award

Kam-Ming Mark Tam was awarded the ETH Medal for his doctoral thesis, Learning Discrete Equilibrium: Trans-topological Inverse Pattern and Force Design Using Machine Learning and Automatic Differentiation.

The ETH Medal is awarded by ETH Zürich in recognition of outstanding doctoral theses. The work was completed at ETH Zürich and examined by a committee including Philippe Block, Tom Van Mele, Andreas Krause, R.K. Otani, Nathan Brown, and chaired by Benjamin Dillenburger.

It's a wrap! MAS T3 Thesis Presentation.

It’s a wrap! 🎉 Huge congratulations to Hamid Peiro and Sukhdevsinh Parmar on successfully completing their ETH Zûrich MAS theses presentations, and for 3-D printing the world’s largest bacteria-based living structure! 👏 Andrea Ling and I are pleased to have served as your thesis co-advisor and we are so proud of all your hard work and dedication—excited to see what comes next for both of you!

Many thanks again to the tireless team managing the MAS programme—people like Ananya Kango and Aejmelaeus-Lindström Petrus—for all their support!

Invitation for PhD Applications

🎓 ❮PhD Applications for 2025/26 Academic Year❯: Applications for the HKU Department of Architecture’s 2025/26 PhD intake are now open. We are excited to participate in this process for the first time and look forward to hearing from prospective candidates.

🔍 ❮Research Interests❯: We welcome applicants from a range of disciplines (e.g., civil/mechanical engineering, architecture, systems engineering, computer/data science, mathematics, etc). If you're interested in areas like computational structural design & modelling, layout optimisation, building automation, digital manufacturing, reinforcement learning, or physics/graph-based deep learning methods, I’d love to hear from you. Possible research areas include (among others):

* Multi-criteria, multi-scale structural topology, and building layout generation
* Machine learning-assisted amortisation of structural design optimisation problems
* Equilibrium-based approaches to structural form-finding
* Adaptive and structurally informed workflows in digital manufacturing
* Automation in construction and building design with foundation models
* Integration of physics with graph-based machine learning and reinforcement learning

📈 ❮Grade Requirements❯: While the university requires a GPA of 3.7/4.0 or higher in your bachelor’s degree, I place equal importance on the quality of your work and research potential. Feel free to reach out to discuss your qualifications.

📅 ❮Application Deadline❯. Please note that the department will begin reviewing applications on 1 November 2024, with a hard university-wide deadline on 1 December 2024 (HKT 23:59, GMT+8)! If you are seeing this message after 1 November, please apply as soon as possible here. For any questions, feel free to reach out at kmmt@hku.hk.

💼 ❮About the Programme❯: The scholarship provides approximately HKD 240,000 per year for four years, with additional travel allowances, access to accommodation, and healthcare services.

🌍 ❮Commitment to Diversity❯: Diversity in ethnicity, gender, and background is a cause I deeply care about and is highly valued. Please note that all instruction at HKU is conducted in English.

🧑‍🏫 ❮Past Supervision Experience❯: I am supervising two doctoral students in Germany and co-advising students in both Germany and Switzerland. I look forward to supervising students here at HKU.

StructurAI at IASS 2024

I had a great time attending the IASS 2024 Symposium on 'Redefining Structural Art'. A sincere thank you once again to the organisers and to everyone I had the pleasure of reconnecting with, especially my wonderful former advisors and colleagues at the Block Research Group. Perhaps one of the greatest delights was the engaging Heinz Isler tour organised by the lovely Giulia Boller.

I was pleased to have hosted the workshop on applying machine learning in structural design with Pierluigi D'Acunto, Lazlo Bleker, Karla Saldaña Ochoa, Zifeng Guo.

Additionally, I was delighted to have contributed two submissions to the conference proceedings:

❶ A collaboration with Pierluigi D'Acunto at TUM that developed a grammar-based environment for training reinforcement learning models to generate equilibrium structures using the CEM form-finding method. Special thanks to Lazlo Bleker for his excellent work. https://lnkd.in/geun8qES

❷ A preliminary investigation into how variations in techniques for describing reticulated designs in text affected the quality of their Large Language Model embedding spaces in reflecting meaningful design distances and preserving design information. https://lnkd.in/gkAK5GMY

Looking forward to seeing everyone again on IASS 2025!

~Mark

Hiring RAs / PhDs Now!

• Opportunity:       Seeking 1-2 motivated Research Assistants for interdisciplinary research in structural design, architecture, computational design, and AI.

• PhD Prospects:   Exceptional candidates may be recommended for the upcoming September 2024 doctoral application round; highly qualified individuals may be admitted sooner.

Research Areas (among others):

• Multi-criteria and multi-scale building layout generation

• Inverse design methods for concept stage structural design

• Structural morphology and form-finding

• Adaptive, structurally informed digital manufacturing workflows

• Construction and design automation using foundation models

Language Requirements:

• Proficiency in English

• For PhD candidates from institutions where English is not the primary language of instruction: TOEFL  85 or IELTS score  7

Skills & Qualifications:

• Strong background in one or multiple topic areas: structural/civil engineering, computational architecture, AI/ML, systems engineering, programming, data science, etc.

• Proficient in Python programming, including scientific computing (e.g., Scipy, Numpy)

• (optional) Basic ML application development experience

• (optional) Experiences in Rhino/Grasshopper plug-in or full-stack web development

• (optional) Expertise in structural analysis and modelling methods (e.g., finite element method)

• (optional) Experiences in digital fabrication, construction robotics, or extended reality technologies

• Strong visualisation, writing, and presentation skills

• For PhD candidates: the university requires excellent academic record for admissions (obtaining GPA 3.6/4.0 or above, or First Class Honours equivalent, during undergraduate studies).

Key Responsibilities:

Conduct background research; perform numerical experiments; collect, generate, and process data; assist with grant applications; support teaching activities, etc.

Compensation & Benefits:

Research Assistant: Approximately HK$19,400/month, with an initial 6-month contract, extendable. Outstanding and qualified candidates may receive competitive salaries and early PhD admission.

PhD Scholarships:  Full tuition waiver, and stipend beginning at $234,000/year.  Additional benefits include housing, annual leave, healthcare, and opportunities for international exchange and internships.
 

Application Details:

Deadline: 30 September, 2024

Submission: Email CV and transcripts to kmmt@hku.hk

Welcome to StructurAI Lab!

Welcome to StructurAI Lab! Our site is currently under construction, but we are excited to share more content and updates with you soon.