Awards and Honors

Academic Awards

• Olympiad Medalist, All Engineering Field, 2025 Olympiad in Engineering Science, University of Stavanger, Norway (2025)
  • Submission: Autonomous Drone-based System for Precision, Non-contact Surface Finishing in Construction
  • Team: Tianyu Ren, Xiayu Zhao, Houtan Jebelli
• First Place, ASCE 2025 Global Robotics and Automation Competition, ASCE Computing Conference, New Orleans (2025)
  • Submission: Module-enhanced Slope-Adaptive and Hazard-Aware Hexapod Robotic System for Safe Roof Inspection
  • Team: Xiayu Zhao, Houtan Jebelli
• Journal Cover Feature, Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering (2025)
  • Paper: A Computational Method for Real-time Roof Defect Segmentation in Robotic Inspection

• Outstanding Graduate Award, Tianjin University (2019)

• Outstanding Graduation Design Award, Tianjin University (2019)

• Tianjin University’s Outstanding Student Award (1/1000) (2019)

• Honorable Mention, Skyscraper Competition (eVolo) (2018)
  • Team: Jiangchen Hu, Yining Bei, Mingwen Zhang

• Outstanding Project Assignment in National Higher Education Institutions (2017)

• China Architecture Newcomers Competition – Top 100 Award (2017)

• First Prize, 4th National Tournament of Green Building Innovation (2015)
  • Team: Adela Wei, Mark Wang, Mason Yang, Yu Zhao
  • Sponsor: The Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB)

Scholarships and Fellowships

• University Graduate Fellowship, Pennsylvania State University (2023)

• College of Engineering Scholarship, College of Engineering, PSU (2023)

• China National Scholarship (1/101), Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (2018)

• China National Scholarship (1/97), Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (2016)

• China National Scholarship (1/94), Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (2015)