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Call for Nomination: Outstanding Alumni Award of PolyU Faculty of Construction and Environment 2022

The Outstanding Alumni Award of PolyU Faculty of Construction and Environment aims to give public recognition to outstanding graduates of FCE for their professional achievements and significant contributions to the community and their alma mater. The year 2022 marks the 85th Anniversary of PolyU. New features are introduced to recognise our distinguished alumni’s diverse accomplishments and contributions.   Nomination and Selection The Award will be organised at three levels, i.e. Department level, Faculty/ School level and University level. Department Award The Outstanding Alumni Award of PolyU Department will be organised by departments. The calls for nomination have started in the third quarter of 2021. Details please refer to the department webpages. Department of Building Environment and Energy Engineering Department of Building and Real Estate Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics   Faculty Award Recipients of Department Awards and graduates who have completed programmes offered at Faculty level are eligible for nomination to the Outstanding Alumni Award of PolyU Faculty of Construction and Environment. FCE is now calling for nomination for Outstanding Alumni Award of PolyU Faculty of Construction and Environment 2022. Nomination Period is from 6 December 2021 to 17 January 2022 (Deadline: 17 January 2022 11:59PM HKT). Please submit the nomination with all the required supplementary documents to michelle.ym.chan@polyu.edu.hk. Nominate a PolyU FCE   University Award While Faculties and Schools will be invited to nominate recipients of their Faculty/School awards for the Outstanding PolyU Alumni Award, the nomination is also open to all eligible graduates. Details will be announced in early 2022. Notes: The bestowal of an award is subject to the individual merits of candidates. No award shall be given out in a certain category if no suitable candidate is identified.   Eligibility The nominated candidate must be a bona fide graduate who has successfully completed full-time or part-time programme offered by PolyU (or its forerunners: Hong Kong Government Trade School, Hong Kong Technical College, Hong Kong Polytechnic, and its constituent units: School of Professional Education & Executive Development and Hong Kong Community College) which led to academic award accredited by the respective Institution. The proposer can be PolyU graduate, Honorary Graduate, University Fellow, PolyU staff, current PolyU Council and Court member and current Advisory Committee member. There is no limit to the number of nominations to be submitted by each proposer. However, the proposer cannot be the candidate himself/herself or a direct relative of the candidate.   Award Categories and Selection Criteria There are four award categories, namely “Professional Achievement”, “Entrepreneurial Achievement”, “Scholarly Achievement” and “Community Service Achievement”. Selection criteria for each category are listed below. Selection is based on the candidate’s personal achievements in the field, contributions to community, and support and contributions to PolyU. Award Category Description  Professional Achievement This category recognises alumni who have attained distinguished achievements, demonstrated exemplary leadership and made a strong impact on their profession/industry. Entrepreneurial Achievement This category recognises alumni who have demonstrated outstanding innovation and entrepreneurship, founded and advanced business or technology ventures with social impact. Scholarly Achievement This category recognises alumni scholars who have made notable scholarly or research contributions in their disciplines, with proven track record and excellent reputation in the field. Community Service Achievement This category recognises alumni who have made impactful contributions to the communities, or demonstrated an extraordinary level of commitment, volunteerism and/or philanthropy for promoting the wellbeing of the communities. Special recognition to outstanding young alumni awardees : Outstanding PolyU Young Alumni award is newly added. Nominees aged under 40 are eligible for this category.   Panel of Judges Panels of Judges, comprising both internal and external members, will be formed at respective levels to examine the nominations and assess candidates’ qualifications and performance for the awards. Enquiry Ms Michelle Chan Faculty of Construction and Environment Email: michelle.ym.chan@polyu.edu.hk Tel: 3400 3877  

27th Congregation of FCE

Congratulations to all our graduates of academic year 2020/21! On 16 and 17 November 2021, the Faculty of Construction and Environment (FCE) held its 27th Congregation in five sessions at the Jockey Club Auditorium on the PolyU campus as well as online. More than 1,400 graduates from its four departments were honoured for completing their studies at higher diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Presiding at the congregation was Prof. Xiang-dong Li, Dean of FCE, who congratulated the graduates and encouraged them to stay connected to PolyU by joining one of its alumni associations. Besides valedictory speeches from a graduate representative of each department, there were also inspiring speeches from the guests of honour, Mr Pang Yiu Hung, JP, in the session for the Department of Building Environment and Energy Engineering and Ir Ricky Lau Chun Kit, JP, in the session for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. It was a memorable occasion for all concerned.

PolyU’s Civil Engineering Ranked Second Globally by US News

In the 2022 Best Global Universities Rankings by US News, PolyU is the fourth best university in Hong Kong and 15th in Asia. Globally, it has jumped from 170th last year to 124th among the top institutions around the world. Its Civil Engineering subject, which is a major offering of the Faculty of Construction of Environment (FCE), is now ranked number two in the world, one spot ahead of last year’s ranking. The US News ranks universities based on 13 indicators that measured their academic research performance and their global and regional reputations.

Smart Tree Management System Transferred to HK Government

The Jockey Club Smart City Tree Management Project finally came to an end after three successful years of implementation, which resulted in a smart monitoring system of about 8,000 trees all over Hong Kong. In a recent closing ceremony, the system’s technology was officially transferred to the Tree Management Office of the HKSAR Government’s Development Bureau. Developed by Prof. Charles Wong and his research team at the Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics (LSGI), the system involves a Smart Sensing Technology and Geographic Information Systems based platform to monitor changes in the environment and other relevant tree data. The leaning trends of trees installed with smart sensors were predicted by big data analysis, triggering safety inspections of trees whose tilting angles exceeded certain thresholds. Risks to passersby and surrounding properties can thus be averted. Speaking at the ceremony, PolyU’s Executive Vice President, Dr Miranda Lou, thanked The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust for their generous support in enabling PolyU to contribute to sustainable development and tree conservation through innovative research. The Under Secretary for Development, Mr Chun-san Liu, JP thanked the project team and expressed that the continued use of the system by the government can benefit the community in facilitating urban forestry management.

Theme-based Research Scheme 2021/22 to Support Creation of Local Outdoor Comfort Hubs

Prof. Jianlei Niu of the Department of Building Services Engineering (BSE) has been awarded $34.6 million by the RGC Theme-based Research Scheme for a project entitled “Healthy and Resilient City with Pervasive LoCHs.” The project aims to create localized outdoor comfort places/hubs (LoCHs) in the urban environment by employing a scientific microclimate design methodology based on advanced modelling and simulation of wind, heat, and moisture in the early stages of building design and planning, with the help of artificial intelligence in optimisation. As the project coordinator, Prof. Niu will lead a team of 13 researchers from various disciplines of PolyU and other local universities, including his BSE colleagues Prof. Cheuk-ming Mak and Dr Ruoyu You, Dr Zheng Tan of the Department of Building and Real Estate (BRE), Prof. John Shi of the Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics (LSGI), and Dr Ting-kei Pong of the Department of Applied Mathematics. The research team also includes 10 researchers from 8 overseas universities, and 2 collaborators respectively from the estate developer and software developer. Prof. Niu looks forward to working with other stakeholders from the relevant government departments and estate development industry to speed up the application of the research results. This is the fourth project in FCE to be supported by the prestigious scheme. The previously awarded projects were respectively led by Prof. Tao Wang and Prof. Jin-Guang Teng of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) as well as Prof. Asif Usmani, Head of BSE.

Donations to Support Pursuit of Excellence in FCE

The Endowed Professorship Scheme of PolyU was established in 2012 to honour distinguished scholars for their outstanding academic and research achievements. Ir Prof. Chi Sun Poon, Head of the Department of Civil and Environment Engineering (CEE) and Chair Professor of Sustainable Construction Materials, was recently appointed as Michael Anson Professor in Civil Engineering under this scheme. Supported by a donation from Able Engineering Co. Ltd., the endowed professorship was named after a founding dean of the predecessor of the Faculty of Construction and Environment, Prof. Michael Anson, to honour him for his enormous contributions to the Faculty since he became the Head of the Department of Civil and Structural Engineering in 1988. Guiding the Faculty’s research development in its early days, Prof. Anson continued to be an inspiration even after his retirement in 2003 as an Emeritus Professor. A fitting tribute to his pioneering spirit, the creation of an endowed professorship in his name adds one more to FCE, bringing the total of such professorships in FCE to six. To support early-career academics and nurture the nascent development of innovative ideas with huge untapped potential, the University has launched the Endowed Young Scholars Scheme. Dr Chao Zhou of CEE was appointed as Tsui Tack Kong Young Scholar in Civil Engineering. An outstanding alumnus of PolyU, Ir Tsui has been a staunch supporter of his alma mater for many years. He has contributed to numerous past initiatives of the university, and wishes to further the advancement of FCE as a leading entity for world-class research and education with his donation to the Endowed Young Scholars Scheme. The Schemes provide philanthropists with the unique opportunity to partner with the University to advance research and academic activities in a discipline of their choice for the benefits of the wider community.

FCE Shines in Research Assessment Exercise 2020

The long-awaited results of the Research Assessment Exercise 2020 are out! The Faculty of Construction and Environment (FCE) is pleased that its submissions to the panel of Built Environment have been favorably assessed by the University Grants Committee (UGC) according to their research outputs, impact, and environment. The FCE submissions were assessed under two Units of Assessment (UoA) , namely (i) civil engineering (including construction engineering and management) and building technology, as well as (ii) planning and surveying (land and other). Overall, 73% of the research by FCE’s 91 eligible staff were deemed “world-leading” (4*) or “internationally excellent” (3*), compared to the sector-wide average of 71%. Among the UGC-funded universities in this field, PolyU is within the top three. In particular, 93% of our research environment and 83% of our research impact were rated “world-leading” (4*) or “internationally excellent” (3*), higher than the respective sector-wide averages of 70% and 74%. With respect to the two UoAs, FCE achieved 75% of 4* and 3* ratings in research outputs in the UoA of planning and surveying (land and other). Its research impact and environment with these ratings in the same UoA were 50% and 85% respectively. In the UoA of civil engineering and building technology, the research outputs of FCE rated 4* and 3* were 65%, while 100% of its research impact and environment achieved these high ratings.

China’s First Landing on Mars Supported by Research of LSGI Academic

The landing of Chinese spacecraft Tianwen-1 on Mars in mid-May 2021 has made aerospace history. It was the first time in the world that a spacecraft has completed orbiting, landing and roving in one single mission. Two PolyU research teams had supported the successful mission. One was led by Prof. Bo Wu of the Department of Land Surveying and Geo-informatics (LSGI). From 2017 to 2020, his team had shortlisted three potential landing regions on Mars, one of which was the southern Utopia Planitia, the largest recognised impact basin in the northern hemisphere of Mars. It was eventually chosen as the target landing region after detailed topographic and geomorphological mapping and analysis. Using the high-resolution images sent from Tianwen-1 of the target landing region covering an area of about 11 times larger than the size of Hong Kong’s territory, Prof. Wu and his team generated high-resolution and high-precision 3D digital topographic models of the target landing region using the integrated 3D mapping model developed by them to analyse the detailed topography and identify large slopes hazardous for landing. They also developed AI-based techniques for more automated and robust analysis of geomorphological features like craters and rocks from the high-resolution images in a short period of time. More than 670,000 craters, over two million rocks, and hundreds of volcanic cones distributed over the target landing region were analyzed in 1.5 months, achieving much higher efficiency in the automatic extraction of rocks and craters with an accuracy of about 85%. The spacecraft for the Tianwen-1 probe comprises an orbiter, a lander and the Zhurong rover. In collaboration with the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), the latest mission aims to obtain scientific exploration data on the Red Planet. With orbiting and landing completed, the Mars rover Zhurong is set to begin its exploration. The whole world is waiting to see what it finds.

FCE Scholars Among World’s Top 2% of Scientists

A total of 163 scholars from PolyU have been ranked among the world’s top 2% most-cited scientists in a recent list compiled by Stanford University. 44 of them are in the Faculty of Construction and Environment (FCE), with 12 in the field of Civil Engineering, 11 in the field of Building and Construction, and the rest in various fields. Among local universities, PolyU had the second most scientists in the list of top 2%. The other fields where FCE academics are listed are Geological and Geomatics Engineering, Energy, Logistics and Transportation, Environmental Sciences, Acoustics, Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Urban & Regional Planning and Strategic, Defence & Security Studies. The full list is available here. The database of close to 160,000 top scientists in the world is created on the basis of standardized citation indicators such as information on citations, an individual’s scientific research output, co-authorship and a composite indicator for career-long citation impact up to the end of 2019.

New Dean for FCE

Prof. Xiangdong Li, Director of PolyU’s Research Institute of Sustainable Urban Development (RISUD) and Ko Jan Ming Professor in Sustainable Urban Development, has been appointed Dean of the Faculty of Construction and Environment (FCE) from 1 January 2021 upon the retirement of Ir Prof. You-Lin Xu. He thanks Prof. Xu for his leadership and guidance over the last 6 years and wishes his predecessor all the best. Prof. Li began his academic career at PolyU in 1995. He has a PhD in environmental technology from Imperial College London. His major research interests include regional pollution, urban environmental studies, and remediation of contaminated sites. He has published more than 200 papers in leading international journals, and is an author of 15 highly cited papers (top 1%) in Environment/Ecology of the Web of Science database. A past president (2011-2013) of the International Society of Environmental Geochemistry and Health (SEGH), he is currently an associate editor for Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T), a journal published by the American Chemical Society, and serves on the editorial board for several other international journals in related fields.