Hongjia Lu

Hongjia Lu is a research fellow in the Centre for Innovative Structures and Materials (CISM), under the supervision of Distinguished Professor Mike Xie at RMIT University, where he works on the ARC Laureate Fellowship project.

He received his B.Eng. Degree in civil engineering from The University of Liverpool in 2013; his M.Sc. degree in structural engineering from the Imperial College London in 2014; and his PhD degree from the University of Sheffield in 2018 with a thesis entitled ‘Application of layout optimisation to the design of bracing in buildings’.

Hongjia’s research interests include truss layout optimisation, continuum topology optimisation and applications related to building structure design and additive manufacturing (AM). From 2017 to 2019, he worked as a core software developer at LimitState Ltd and contributed to the development of layout optimisation plugins LimitState:FORM (Ansys SpaceClaim based) and Peregrine (Rhino-Grasshopper based). From 2019 to 2020, he worked as a Research Associate on the INTEGRADDE project at the University of Sheffield and focused on the structural optimisation of metal components manufactured using multi-axis AM machines. He worked at the Zhejiang University in 2021 and headed a research project involving three post-graduate students on AM-related topology and layout optimisation.

His key research activities focus on the development of automatic design techniques for free-form structures and application of the new techniques to industrial projects.

Industry experience:
Jan 2022 - Present: Research Fellow at RMIT University.
May 2021 - Dec. 2022: Research Associate at the Zhejiang University.
Mar. 2019 - Nov. 2020: Research Associate at the University of Sheffield. Part of the INTEGRADDE Project.
Aug. 2017 - Mar. 2019: Software developer in Limitstate Ltd, UK.
Jan. - Apr. 2016: Graduate teaching assistant in Matlab exercises of Structural analysis.
Nov. - Dec. 2016: Graduate teaching assistant in Composite Steel and Concrete Construction.