Xu Yangsheng, born on 7 April 1958 in Shaoxing, Zhejiang, is a Chinese expert in space robotics and intelligent control. He graduated from Shaoxing No. 1 Middle School in 1974 and was sent to the countryside before entering Zhejiang University as one of the first cohort after the resumption of the national college entrance exam in 1977. He earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1982 and a master's in precision machinery in 1984, then a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989. From 1989 to 1997 he was a researcher at the robotics institute of Carnegie Mellon University, specialising in space robotics. He moved to Hong Kong in 1997 to join the engineering faculty of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, chaired its automation department from 1997 to 2004, and later served as assistant to the vice-chancellor, associate pro-vice-chancellor and pro-vice-chancellor, while long heading the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Integration Technology. His research spans space and service robots, wearable human-machine interfaces, intelligent vehicles, dynamic stabilisation and machine learning, and he has published six books and more than 300 international papers; in 2009 he was one of five Hong Kong-based scientists invited to study data returned by the Chang'e-1 lunar probe. Elected an IEEE Fellow in 2003 and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2007, he also holds fellowships of the US National Academy of Engineering, the European Academy of Sciences, the International Academy of Astronautics, the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences and the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences. In July 2013 he was appointed, after a global search, the founding president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, steering it towards development as a research university, and he was reappointed at the end of 2024. On 14 November 2016 the International Astronomical Union named main-belt asteroid 59425 after him.
Xu brought research in space robotics and intelligent control to Hong Kong and Shenzhen. As the founding president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen from 2013, he steered the university towards a research-oriented model and has advanced research and training in robotics, artificial intelligence and intelligent vehicles.
Achievements
- 1989 · Earned his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.
- 2007 · Elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
- 2013 · Appointed the founding president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.
- 2016 · Main-belt asteroid 59425 was named after him.