About the Author: Zude Zhou is the Professor and Doctoral Supervisor of Wuhan University of Technology and the Director of Hubei Digital Manufacturing Key Lab, China. He obtained his Bachelor of Engineering degree in the Department of Electric Power Engineering at Huazhong Institute of Technology in 1970. From 1984 to 1986, he undertook advanced studies at the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the University of Birmingham. He is a guest professor of the University of Bolton, the University of Hong Kong, and the National University of Singapore. Before joining the Wuhan University of Technology in 2000, he was the Professor and Vice-President of the Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
Prof. Zhou is a senior member of the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He is a council member of the International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP). He is the Vice-President of the Hubei Mechanical Engineering Society and the Hubei Mechatronics Society in China. He is also the Executive Council Member of the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society and the Society of Automation Engineers of China. Prof. Zhou has served as a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Vehicle Noise and Vibration, the International Journal of Biomechatronics and Biomedical Robotics (IJBBR), and the Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Chinese Journal Digital Manufacturing Science.
Prof. Zhou's main areas of expertise are digital manufacturing, intelligent manufacturing, modern manufacturing technology, and the reliability and diagnosis of modern manufacturing systems. He has carried out many pioneering works, especially in the area of digital manufacturing. Furthermore, Prof. Zhou was the first to propose the concept of digital manufacturing, which was represented in his book Digital Manufacturing. Prof. Zhou has won more than 20 national-level, ministerial-level or provincial-level awards, including 4 second-class national-level awards, and 10 first-class ministerial-level or provincial-level awards.
Shane (Shengquan) Xie works for the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
Dejun Chen is a professor of the School of Information Engineering, Wuhan University Technology, Wuhan, China.
