The Outstanding Alumni Award of PolyU Department aims to give public recognition to outstanding graduates of the Department of Building Environment and Energy Engineering (BEEE) for their significant contributions to their profession and community, as well as to their alma mater. The Award was first presented in 2010, and this year marks the 8th round of the selection process.
We are pleased to announce the two distinguished awardees for 2024:
Outstanding Alumni Award in Community Service Achievement of PolyU BEEE 2024
Ir Dr CHAN Chi Wing
Dr Chan is a Hong Kong Registered Professional Engineer and UK Chartered Engineer, a practising professional project manager taking up a senior management level in a leading property development enterprise in Hong Kong. Dr Chan is an expert in built environment and urban sustainability. He has been involved in the development of a number of award-winning green building projects at both international and regional levels over the past two decades across Hong Kong, Mainland China, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. In recent years, Dr Chan has been promoting smart green buildings and healthy green buildings in the sustainable built environment context, delivering presentations and talks in Hong Kong, Mainland China and the USA, namely the annual China Green Building Council’s International Green Building Conference, US Green Building Council’s Greenbuild International Conference, BODW and other relevant events in Hong Kong.
Apart from his professional responsibilities, Dr Chan has been actively offering pro bono services and leadership to charitable organizations, as well as in various public posts. The impact of his services for the social good reaches the communities in Hong Kong, Mainland China and overseas.
Since 2017, Dr Chan has been serving Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Hong Kong in the position of Chairman. This Hongkong-based international organization is an IRD-approved charitable organization in Hong Kong and a member organization of Hong Kong Council of Social Services. EWB is serving the communities for the purposes of accelerating the betterment in life of disadvantaged communities and promoting sustainable development through the empowerment of engineering means, and, enhancing the capacity of Hong Kong’s professionals and the generations to come to contribute to the communities in need. Through his leadership, EWB Hong Kong has established a wider connection with overseas EWBs and other overseas charitable organisations in Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, UK, etc.
The EWB Global Citizenship Programme (GCP), initiated by Dr Chan and established in 2018, is now EWB Hong Kong’s flagship programme bringing university and tertiary-level local and overseas students studying in Hong Kong together. GCP provides a platform for future engineering leaders and Change Makers to explore global challenges, to serve the society proactively with a global vision, and hence to contribute to the sustainable development goals as global citizens. Dr Chan was one of the speakers at the Asia Pacific Humanitarian Leadership Conference 2019 in Australia; and, in 2020, represented EWB Hong Kong attending the United Nations UN-Habitat World Urban Forum 10 in UAE.
Since 2020, Dr Chan has been serving Wu Zhi Qiao (Bridge to China) Charitable Foundation at the position of Vice Chairman. This Hong Kong based organization is an IRD-approved charitable organization in Hong Kong. Wu Zhi Qiao is serving the communities for the purposes of encouraging the youth in Hong Kong and mainland China to participate in countryside conservation or rural revitalization on a voluntary basis with the application of the concept of sustainable development - to build hearts bridge between HK-Mainland youth, and, to improve villagers’ quality of life. Besides, Dr Chan is also a member of the Advisory Committee of Recycling Fund of the HKSAR Government since 2015.
Outstanding Young Alumni Award in Scholarly Achievement of PolyU BEEE 2024
Professor SONG Mengjie
Prof. Song Mengjie is the Head of Frost Laboratory, at Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), China, a Visiting Professor at Hanyang University, South Korea, and a Guest Professor at Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Czech Republic. He got Ph.D. degrees from Building Services Engineering of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2014. Before coming to BIT, he worked as a Research Fellow, JSPS Research Fellow, and DECRA Research Fellow at the Nanyang Technological University, University of Tokyo, and University of Wollongong, respectively. He also has work experience in the engineering field, such as Engineer at the Central-South Architectural Design Institute Co., Ltd., President Assistant at Beijing District Heating Group Co., Ltd. and Beijing Energy Research Institute, Beijing, China.
Prof. Song has focused on the mechanism study of heat and mass transfer coupled with the flow for more than 16 years. Currently, he has published 196 journal articles, of which 105 SCI ones as first/corresponding author, 8 ESI ones, and 30 IF＞10 ones. He published 3 books and 4 chapters for Elsevier and Wiley and applied for 20 Chinese patents. He holds 28 projects from China, Japan, and Australia, with a total amount of more than 40 million RMB. Around Frosting and Defrosting topics, he was the world’s No. 1 scholar in 2016-2023 in the FindReviewer database of Elsevier. He was selected into the World’s Top 2% Scientists list (Career & Singleyr) in 2020-2023, the National Youth Talent Project in 2021, the China-South Korea Young Scientists Exchange Program in 2023, and Chinese Highly Cited Scholars in 2024.
Prof. Song is an active scholar, serving as the Editor-in-Chief of Recent Patents on Mechanical Engineering (EI, Scopus), Young Editorial Board of Applied Energy (SCI, IF=11.2), and Guest Editors of Applied Thermal Engineering (SCI, IF=6.4), Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments (SCI, IF=8), Energy and Buildings (SCI, IF=6.7) and Micromachines (SCI, IF=3.523), etc. He works as a Member of the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR, B1), the Chinese Association of Refrigeration (CAR), the Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics (CSAA), and Japan Society of Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers (JSRAE), etc. He is also the corresponding expert of the National Nature Science Foundation of China, the National Science Foundation of the United States, the Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences (AES) of the Dutch Research Council (NWO), the Australian Research Council (ARC), and The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).
The Department is proud to recognize the outstanding achievements of these two awardees in the building services engineering industry and their contributions to the community and PolyU. We extend our gratitude to all the Selection Panel members for their excellent volunteer work in the selection process.
