His research interests include smart materials and structures, and multi-field coupling mechanics. He is currently focusing on the application of ferroelectric materials in the fields of solid refrigeration, energy storage, energy harvesting, and intelligent sensing.

Dr. Xu HOU is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He received his bachelor's degree in engineering from Harbin Institute of Technology (Weihai) in 2015 and Ph.D. degree from Zhejiang University in 2021. He was funded by the China Scholarship Council for one-year jointly training at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in 2020-2021. He won the Hong Kong RGC Postdoctoral Fellowship Award in Nov. 2022. He is now served as reviewer for several international journals such as Adv. Electron. Mater. and Nanotechnology. He has published over 30 SCI in reputed journals, among which over 10 first or co-first authored papers were published in Nature Comm., Adv. Energy Mater., Small, Chem. Eng. J, Phys. Rev. Appl, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, etc. He is a co-inventor of 3 Chinese patents, and key research member of 5 NSFC projects.