Dr Au obtained BEng (1995) and MPhil (1997) from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and PhD (2001) from the California Institute of Technology, all in civil engineering. Before the present position he has held academic positions at NTU, City University of Hong Kong and University of Liverpool. Dr Au is a chartered civil engineer in Hong Kong. He chaired the ASCE Dynamics Committee (2014-17); is Associate Editor of Structural Health Monitoring (Sage) and Earthquake Spectra (EERI/Sage); and is Editorial Board Member of Probabilistic Engineering Mechanics (Elsevier) and Journal of Risk & Uncertainty Analysis in Engineering (ASCE-ASME) A & B.

Dr Au performs fundamental and applied research in engineering reliability methods and structural health monitoring. He has developed an advanced Monte Carlo method called Subset Simulation that has found applications in uncertainty propagation and rare event simulation by researchers independently in different disciplines. See monograph ‘Engineering Risk Assessment with Subset Simulation’ (Wiley). Recent examples include risk assessment for nuclear fuel, 5G communication, power transmission, and unmanned aerial vehicles; and being used as machine learning tool for training physics-informed neural networks.

Dr Au is experienced in full-scale dynamic testing of structures and has consulted on structural vibration projects on long-span pedestrian bridges, large-span floors, super-tall buildings, microtremors for seismic microzonation and deep sea sensing. Recent research in this area focuses on fundamental theory, computational algorithm and practical implementation of Bayesian approach for modal identification and structural system identification of full-scale structures. See monograph ‘Operational Modal Analysis: Modelling, Bayesian Inference, Uncertainty Laws’ (Springer). Dr Au is a recipient of the IASSAR Junior Research Prize (2005), Nishino Prize (2011), JSPS Fellowship (2014) and Tan Chin Tuan Fellowship (2015).