Yukio Tamura is a Professor of the School of Civil Engineering, Chongqing University, China. He is also a Professor Emeritus of Tokyo Polytechnic University (TPU), Japan, and the Honorary Director of the TPU Wind Engineering Research Center. He served as a State Specially Recruited Expert Professor of Beijing Jiaotong University, China, for three years from 2014 to 2017 with the One Thousand Foreign Experts Program of Chinese Government. Professor Yukio Tamura received his Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees from Waseda University, Japan. He served as the Director of the 21st Century Center of Excellence (COE) program and of the Global COE program funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan, for 10 years from 2003 to 2013. He contributed to the creation of a global apex research and education base in wind engineering.
Professor Yukio Tamura has been dedicated to structural wind engineering research for many years. He has conducted long-term, systematic and in-depth research in all aspects of wind-resistant design of building structures including basic theory of bluff body aerodynamics, rational determination of design wind speed, provision of structural wind loading and calculation of structural equivalent static wind loading, evaluation of structural aerodynamic stability, compilation and revision of the wind resistant design code for building structures, wind hazard mitigation and so on. He has made creative contributions to reasonable wind resistant design of buildings. His outstanding achievements in engineering and technology are embodied in mathematical models, and quantification and analysis of wind loads on building structures. He has worked on the basic theory of wind effects on building structures and codification of wind resistant design methods, and has achieved leading and original research results, which makes him as a world-renowned expert in structural wind engineering. Professor Tamura has published more than 300 academic papers and nearly 40 books.
Professor Yukio Tamura is a representative personage in the international wind engineering community, who served as the President of the International Association for Wind Engineering (IAWE) for eight years from 2007 to 2015. He has also contributed to society by way of various social activities. He established and has chaired the International Group for Wind-Related Disaster Risk Reduction as one of the thematic groups under the auspices of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction Secretariat since 2009. Through those disaster risk reduction activities, he has provided technical advice and training to government departments, research institutes and grassroots organizations. He serves as a chair/member of many wind engineering related professional and advisory committees in a number of countries including Japan, China, and the United States. He also actively promoted the coordination and harmonization of design wind loading codes for building structures of various countries, especially in the Asia and pan-Pacific region. He has been promoting a series of International Advanced Schools on wind engineering in many countries and regions including China, with its emerging wind engineering needs, to promote the popularization of wind engineering expertise.
Professor Yukio Tamura has been involved in long-term and stable cooperation with China. He has made outstanding contributions to cultivation of wind engineering professionals in China. Since the 1980s, he has accepted and funded more than 50 students or researchers to study or research in Japan, who have already become scientific research backbones in many Chinese universities. He has been an honorary/advisory/visiting professor of more than 15 universities in China. He has also participated in many Chinese scientific research projects including major Sino-Japanese cooperation projects. Besides his excellent academic research works, Professor Yukio Tamura has been contributing his wisdom in engineering application and wind disaster mitigation in China. He has provided important guidance in the wind-resistant design of wind-sensitive structures such as the world’s highest solar tower and super-tall buildings. He has participated in the preparation of relevant design codes in China.
Due to his internationally recognized outstanding academic achievements and contributions, Professor Yukio Tamura has received many awards including the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Jack E. Cermak Medal in 2004, the ASCE Robert H. Scanlan Medal in 2016, as well as the IAWE Alan Davenport Medal in 2016. In addition, due to his various professional contributions, he has received other important awards, including the Japan Association for Wind Engineering Design Award for his contribution to the wind resistant design of the 634m-high Tokyo Sky Tree in 2015. Professor Yukio Tamura is a member of the Engineering Academy of Japan and a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering. He was also granted the Chinese Government Friendship Award in 2017.