Speakers

Wangyang (Ocean) Hu is a co-founder and materials researcher and Aeropod R&D lead at Muju Earth Technologies, with a background in product design engineering from Beijing University of Chemical Technology, and a dual masters in Innovation Design Engineering from Imperial and the Royal College of Art. He has has a long-standing focus on the coupling between physical structures, material behaviour, and ecological processes. He is recognised for strong creative thinking and the ability to rapidly identify key variables within complex problem spaces, enabling the development of innovative and unconventional solution pathways.

In this project, Wangyang leads physical system design, experimental prototyping, and cross-scale mechanism exploration, with particular emphasis on the physical bottlenecks linking soil structure, gas exchange, and biological response. He specialises in using rapidly iterated experimental rigs and physical proxy models to decompose abstract ecological challenges into testable engineering hypotheses, providing clear constraints for downstream biological and systems-level investigation. His creative approach has repeatedly enabled technical breakthroughs at critical decision points, allowing the team to identify high-leverage pathways under limited resources.

His focus on mechanism-level questions, and ability to integrate design, engineering, and ecological logic form a key foundation for exploring non-traditional but potentially high-impact intervention pathways.