News

Secondary School Outreach 2020/21

Distance does not stop us from reaching out to secondary schools! The Department organized virtual and physical activities for the following secondary schools to provide programme admission talk and mini-lectures on civil and environmental engineering in 2020/21.   Baptist Wing Lung Secondary School Cheung Sha Wan Catholic Secondary School Kiangsu-Chekiang College (Shatin) & Shatin Pui Ying College Lingnan Hang Yee Memorial Secondary School Lok Sin Tong Ku Chiu Man Secondary School Queen Elizabeth School Old Students' Association Queen's College Shatin Pui Ying College St Francis Xavier's School, Tsuen Wan TWGHS Lui Yun Choy Memorial College Valtorta College

PolyU Info Day for Taught Postgraduate Programmes 2021

Looking for Taught Postgraduate Programmes related to civil and environmental engineering? Come and join our PolyU Info Day for Taught Postgraduate Programmes 2021!  Info Seminars for MSc in Civil Engineering & MSc in Environmental Management and Engineering Date: 9 Jan 2021 (Sat)  Time: 3:00 – 4:00 pm Platform: Zoom Registration link: https://www.polyu.edu.hk/tpginfoday/ (Prior registration is required.) More details of the above programmes can be found at https://www.polyu.edu.hk/cee/study/taught-postgraduate-programmes/.   

CEE Research Scholars Alumni Association (CEE-RSAA)

CEE-RSAA was set up and had its first committee meeting held online on 5 Dec 2020.  Members discussed on issues related to the positioning of CEE-RSAA, cultural construction responsibility, information platforms, long-term working mechanism, etc. and reached a consensus on the medium to long-term goals. It was hoped that all members might work together to serve the association and the wider community.   CEE-RSAA Committee Members: Chairman CHEN Jun (STR, Shanghai) Vice Chairmen CHEN Guangming (STR, Guangzhou) DING Aijun (ENV, Nanjing) LI Zhichun (TRA, Wuhan) ZHAN Jiemin (HYD, Guangzhou) ZHU Honghu (GEO, Nanjing) Members CHONG Dan (TRA, Shanghai) DUAN Yuanfeng (STR, Hangzhou) FU Yufang (STR, Beijing) GUO Anxin (STR, Harbin) HUANG Yu (ENV, Xi’an) LU Xinzheng (STR, Beijing) LUO Chunling (ENV, Guangzhou) PEI Huafu (GEO, Dalian) ZENG Cheng (HYD, Nanjing) ZHAN Baojian (ENV, Shenzhen) ZHOU Yaoyu (ENV, Changsha) Secretary WENG Shun (STR, Wuhan)

CEE Scholars’ Work on “A Smarter Radiative Cooler” Recommended by Science Editor’s Choice

Prof. Jian-Guo Dai’s research team, which includes Dr Xiao XUE, Research Fellow of Prof. Dai’s group, focuses on engineering inexpensive coating materials for buildings. It takes advantage of daytime radiative cooling but suppress it in the night when cooling no longer is needed. This is accomplished by widening the emissivity spectrum over the entire mid-infrared range. The strategy also uses common materials for the coatings that are more likely to withstand long-term weathering. Their work was recommended by Science Editor’s Choice. More details can be found at https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6522/twil.   

Best Student Presentation Award

Congratulations to two PhD students, Chang HE and Pin Zhang, for obtaining the “Best Student Presentation Award” during the 24th Annual Conference of HKSTAM 2020 and the 16th Shanghai – Hong Kong Forum on Mechanics and Its Application held on 5 Dec 2020. They are supervised by Dr Zhen-Yu Yin, Associate Professor of CEE.

New Joiner - Dr Chen Qianjie

Dr Chen, Qianjie - Research Assistant Professor Dr. Chen received a B.Sc. in Atmospheric Sciences from Sun Yat-sen University (2011), a M.Sc. in Meteorology, Physical Oceanography and Climate from Utrecht University (2013), and a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from University of Washington, Seattle (2017). Before joining us, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2018-2020). Dr. Chen’s research resides in the field of atmospheric chemistry, the objective of which is to elucidate the abundances, sources, and sinks of the chemical species in the atmosphere. With the goal of addressing the chemistry aspects of global warming and air pollution issues facing the human race, Dr. Chen’s research interests include sulfur, nitrogen, and halogen chemistry in the lower atmosphere, and blowing snow in the Arctic. Dr. Chen was the selected Early Career Researcher Profile in the Cryosphere and Atmospheric Chemistry (CATCH) Open Science Workshop (2020), and the selected participant for the Atmospheric Chemistry Colloquium for Emerging Senior Scientists (ACCESS XV) (2019). He received the HHMI Teaching Postdoctoral Fellowship from University of Michigan (2018), Utrecht Excellence Scholarships and Buys Ballot Graduate Scholarships from Utrecht University (2011-2013).   Dr Chen has joined us on 7 December 2020.  

New Joiner - Dr Alireza Keramat

Dr Alireza Keramat - Research Assistant Professor   Dr Keramat obtained MSc and PhD degrees in Civil Engineering, majored in Hydraulic Structures, in 2006 and 2011 from Shahid Chamran University and Shahrood University of Technology, respectively. Affiliated as a faculty member in Civil Engineering Department of Jundi-Shapur University of Technology following his graduation, he taught several undergraduate and postgraduate courses and (co-) supervised/advised 14 MSc and 5 PhD students. He was a visiting scholar in Eindhoven University of Technology (2009-2010), visiting faculty member in Tokyo Institute of Technology (2014), Research Associate in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (2016-2017) and visiting faculty member in the University of Alberta (2019-2020). His main research interests include: wave propagation, fluid-structure interaction, column separation, defect detection, non-Newtonian fluids, viscoelasticity and buckling in pipelines and pipe networks as well as their mathematical modelling and statistical analysis. Dr Alireza Keramat has joined us on 1 Dec 2020.

Entry Scholarships up to HK$50,000!

The Department has launched a new entry scholarship scheme for outstanding DSE students admitted to our undergraduate programmes via JUPAS in 2021/22. The scholarship amount is up to HK$50,000, which is more than a one-year tuition waiver. For details, please refer to https://www.polyu.edu.hk/cee/study/undergraduate-programmes/jupas-applicants/.

PhD student awarded Student Scholarship

PhD student awarded Student Scholarship A PhD student, Qian, Jing, was awarded the Student Scholarship during the 7th International Symposium on Reliability and Engineering and Risk Management (ISRERM2020). Only three papers were selected for the scholarship, according to the judges based on their presentations. Congratulations!

Three CEE Scholars named “Highly Cited Researchers 2020"

Three CEE Scholars named “Highly Cited Researchers 2020” Congratulations to Prof. Kwok-Wing Chau (Engineering), Prof. Shun-cheng Lee (Cross-Field) and Dr Daniel CW Tsang (Environment/Ecology) for being listed as Highly Cited Researcher 2020 by Clarivate Analytics. It identifies researchers who have demonstrated significant and broad influence in their fields over the last decade, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in the Web of Science™. Of the world’s scientists and social scientists, Clarivate™ Highly Cited Researchers are truly one in 1,000. This is definitely a recognition to their high quality publication and scientific impact in the fields.   Prof. Kwok-Wing Chau was awarded a BSc in civil engineering with First Class Honours from the University of Hong Kong, an MSc in civil engineering with distinction from the University of Hong Kong, and a PhD from the University of Queensland in Australia.  He is very active in undertaking research works and the scope of his research interests is very broad, covering numerical flow modeling, water quality modeling, hydrological modeling, knowledge-based system development and artificial intelligence applications. Prof. Chau has published over 250 Science Citation Index journal papers and the total number of non-self citations is over 10,000. He acquired many prestigious research awards: 2008 Natural Science Class 1 Award conferred by Ministry of Education in China, 2009 Dean’s Award for Outstanding Publication Achievement (Overall performance in citation in the past 10 years), 2009 National Natural Science Class 2 Award, Dean’s Awards for Outstanding Publication Achievement (Highly-cited papers) in various years, and 2018 – 2020 Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics.   Prof. Shun-cheng Lee earned a Doctorate in Environmental Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley in 1994. His research focus includes chemical characteristics, sources, vehicle emission profiles, indoor cooking, carbon aerosols, and toxic gaseous pollutants. He has completed the comprehensive emission inventory and source emission profiles of vehicles, cooking, ships, and household cleaners in Hong Kong. He has published 308 papers in the international journals, being cited by SCI in total of 19,161 times (h-index: 78). He was awarded as Highly Cited Researcher (cross-field) by Clarivate in 2018 – 2020. In 2019, he was awarded as Fellow of Asian Aerosol Research Assembly (AARA).  Prof. Lee is the Associate Head and Odour Lab In Charge at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of PolyU.     Dr Daniel CW Tsang is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. He was Visiting Scholar at Ghent University in Belgium and Stanford University in the US, Senior Lecturer at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and Post-doctoral Fellow at Imperial College London in the UK. Dan’s research group strives to develop low-carbon solutions to ensure sustainable development and circular economy. Dan has published over 400 research articles in top 10% journals (54 highly cited papers, 4 hot papers, 10000+ citations) and served as Associate Editor and Editorial Board Member of various environmental science and engineering journals. Dan is the Chair and Organizer of many international conferences such as 5th Asia Pacific Biochar Conference (APBC2021).