Recently, Dr. Rui Zhu, a member of Professor Zhiguo He's team at the Institute of Port, Coastal and Offshore Engineering, Zhejiang University, received notification from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation that he had been selected for the 2025 Humboldt Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and awarded the title of Humboldt Fellow. Dr. Zhu is the first postdoctoral researcher trained by the ZJU Ocean College to receive this honor.

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, founded in 1860, is one of the world's most influential and prestigious research funding institutions. It is considered one of the three major European programs for outstanding scientific talent, alongside the EU's Marie Curie Fellowship and the UK's Newton Foundation. To date, it has funded over 30,000 scholars from more than 140 countries, and selected scholars enjoy lifelong Humboldt Fellow status.

Following his selection for the foundation's funded project, Dr. Zhu Rui will collaborate with the Technical University of Dresden, a member of the TU9 alliance of leading German technical universities, focusing on the fluid dynamics mechanisms of microbial communities in marine stratified environments, further deepening our fundamental understanding of the coupling between marine microscale processes and fluid dynamics.

Dr. Zhu Rui has been pursuing his doctoral degree at the ZJU Ocean College since 2016, under the supervision of Professor Zhiguo HE, primarily focusing on particle density current dynamics. During his doctoral studies, he participated in the 43rd Ocean Expedition with Professor He, analyzing the distribution patterns of deep-sea hydrothermal plumes and polymetallic sulfides in the Carlsberg Ridge of the Northwest Indian Ocean. Subsequently, leveraging the excellent research facilities of the ZJU Ocean College, he achieved a series of innovative results in areas such as the dynamic mechanisms of marine density stratified gravity flows and underwater particle flows, as well as high-precision CFD-DEM numerical simulation technology, publishing 12 papers in high-level international fluid mechanics journals such as the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. His doctoral dissertation won the 2023 National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Chinese Society for Oceanography (CSO) and the Zhejiang Provincial Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Award.

(Zhu Wen)