Xia Yuanjie

szrbgracexia@126.com

LI YONG, a veteran bridge engineer, was elected as a foreign member of the Ukrainian Academy of Engineering Science on Nov. 27, and became Shenzhen’s first private entrepreneur with an academician title.

“I was very pleasantly surprised to be laureled! It is an honor for Chinese experts to enter an international academician list. I am grateful for Shenzhen’s reform and opening-up policy and everything the city has given to me!” the founder and CEO of Shenzhen Bridge Doctor Design and Institute, a national high-tech enterprise, told Shenzhen Daily.

Founded in 1991, the Ukrainian Academy of Engineering Science is an academic organization consisting of over 300 scientists and engineers. The academy aims to unite the efforts of its members to increase intellectual capacity in engineering. Currently, it has 53 foreign members and 11 of them were newly added at last month’s ceremony.

Born in Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture of Hunan Province, Li earned a bachelor’s degree in bridge engineering at Central South University in his home province. After graduation, he was recruited by China Railway Major Bridge Reconnaissance & Design Institute, a large State-owned enterprise (SOE), working under Fang Qinhan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, in Wuhan, Hubei Province.

In 1992, Li transferred to Shenzhen and his performance in solving an arch axis calculation on Shenzhen Rainbow Bridge’s design earned him a good reputation in the industry.

In 2002, Li was entrusted with presiding over the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Western Corridor Bridge at Shenzhen Bay in Nanshan District. His team put forth an ecological construction method: “We took bird migration routes, living environment of marine wild animals and plants, land use efficiency and residents’ livability into consideration and designed an environmentally friendly bridge. This construction approach has been an exemplary model which has been applied in several other projects, like the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge,” Li said proudly.

In 2010, Li set up his company Bridge Doctor in order to innovate without an SOE’s institutional limitations. “Although it is tough to balance making profits and making technological innovations, I am very grateful to start up a company in Shenzhen, a place possessing a fair business environment and talent hub,” he said.

Working with top bridge engineers and scholars, leading designs of several key projects at the national level and receiving a Ph.D. degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Li has become a prominent Chinese bridge engineering expert in steel structure and composite structure bridges. Apart from winning a myriad of prestigious awards and titles, the 49-year-old Li made it to the list of CAE academician candidates in 2015 as the youngest nominee.

Talking about his future plans, Li said “I will continue to cultivate young talents and will actively set up a national bridge engineering laboratory, making contributions to China’s bridge engineering industry.”