Hongkai Zhao

Hongkai Zhao is the Ruth F. DeVarney Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Chair of the Department of Mathematics at Duke University's Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from UCLA (1996) and has held prior positions including Chancellor's Professor at UC Irvine and Gábor Szegő Assistant Professor at Stanford University. His research focuses on computational and applied mathematics with applications in inverse problems, imaging, PDEs, and scientific computing.

Key research areas include numerical methods for wave propagation, radiative transfer, and shape analysis. Zhao has led NSF-funded projects on PDE learning, radiative transfer, and analysis training. He has received prestigious awards including the Feng Kang Prize (2007) and SIAM Fellowship (2022). Teaching includes advanced courses on stochastic processes, numerical linear algebra, and mathematical analysis. His work bridges theory and practice, contributing to medical imaging algorithms, computational physics, and geometric modeling.