The award recognizes sustained excellence in editorial service in the volume, quality, and speed of the peer review.
ME Associate Professor Dr. Chao Hu has been selected as a 2025 Associate Editor of the Year for the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design (JMD). The award recognizes Associate Editors who have made outstanding contributions to the journal in terms of the quantity, quality, and turnaround time of papers coordinated during the past year.
It is a distinction that says as much about the discipline of the work as the volume of it. Every paper an Associate Editor handles represents a chain of decisions, from identifying reviewers with the right expertise, to weighing conflicting recommendations, and returning a defensible verdict to authors who are often waiting on it for a degree, a grant renewal, or a tenure case. Doing that well, at scale, and quickly is a form of service that rarely announces itself. JMD’s award exists precisely to make it visible.
Dr. Hu is the Collins Aerospace Professor in Engineering Innovation and an Associate Professor in the School of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Manufacturing Engineering at UConn. He has served as an Associate Editor for JMD since 2022 and is currently serving his second three-year term.
A long record of service
Hu has a long record of service to ASME and the design automation community. He has been a member of the ASME Design Automation Executive Committee since 2021. His service to JMD began well before his appointment as an Associate Editor: he has been a regular reviewer for the journal since 2011 and received the ASME Reviewers of the Year Award in 2019.
The fourteen-year time frame, from first-time reviewer to award-winning editor, traces a path that is increasingly rare and increasingly needed. Peer review depends on researchers who are willing to invest in a journal over the long term, and Hu’s history with JMD reflects that kind of commitment to the field’s shared infrastructure.
Research at the intersection of design and uncertainty
Prof. Hu’s research focuses on engineering design under uncertainty, battery health diagnostics and prognostics, and machine and structural health monitoring. The through-line across these areas is a practical one: engineered systems degrade, operating conditions vary, and models are imperfect. His work develops methods for designing and monitoring systems that must perform reliably anyway, which is a task with direct consequences for electrified transportation, aerospace structures, and manufacturing equipment alike.
At UConn, he is part of a strong design group in Mechanical Engineering that consists of more than 10 tenure-track faculty, giving the school unusual depth in design theory, optimization, and reliability.
In addition to his role with JMD, Hu serves as a Senior Editor for Engineering Optimization and as a Review Editor for Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization.
