Achievement of Faculty Members

105 FENG scholars (including retired or former members) have been listed among the top 2% scientists in a global list released by the prestigious Stanford University. The ranking identifies the top scholars in their own areas of specialty and whose publications are most frequently cited by other authors around the globe.

The scholars were named in the "Updated science-wide author databases of standardised citation indicators", compiled by Stanford University where a research team, led by Professor John Ioannidis, created the database of close to 160,000 top scientists across the world on the basis of standardised citation indicators. The scientists were grouped into 22 subject fields and 176 sub-fields using the indicators, which included 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 2021.

The full list of FENG scholars and their respective subject fields can be viewed at the link.

Congratulations to our Faculty members on the high ranking!

Table 1 - Number of FENG researchers according to subject fields

(The above listed includes current, former and retired researchers of the Faculty.)

Professor WANG Zuankai, Associate Vice President (Research and Innovation) and Chair Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), has received the Croucher Senior Research Fellowship 2023 in recognition of his outstanding achievements in nature-inspired engineering and his breakthrough research on inhibiting the Leidenfrost effect. Each award carries a value of HK$2 million over one year towards the award winner's research expenses.

Nature-inspired innovation is an interdisciplinary science that integrates biology, physics, chemistry, materials, engineering and other disciplines. It draws inspiration from living creatures and learning from nature to find innovative solutions.

Professor WANG’s research centres on nature-inspired engineering with a particular focus on exploring and observing the surface properties of natural creatures to develop novel nature-inspired materials for a wide range of applications such as water and energy harvesting, thermal cooling, fluid transport, and flexible electronics.

For example, by observing the lotus leaves that enable water to drain away, Professor Wang and his team have developed a new material that can quickly repel water, which helps prevent the accumulation of ice on metal surfaces such as aircraft wings and engines, thus reducing the occurrence of accidents.

One of the most impactful scientific breakthroughs of Professor WANG’s research is to identify an innovative solution to addressing the liquid cooling of high-temperature surfaces by suppressing the classical physical phenomenon- the Leidenfrost effect, a challenge that scientists have been unable to overcome for centuries.

Honored to receive the Fellowship from the Croucher Foundation, Professor WANG said, “I am grateful for the Croucher Foundation for recognising my research efforts on nature-inspired engineering and studies into the Leidenfrost effect. I hope the recognition will motivate more scholars to seek inspiration from nature and draw innovation in related research”.

Professor WANG received his B.S. degree from Jilin University in 2000, M.S. degree from the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2003, and Ph.D. degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2008. After one-year postdoctoral training at Columbia University, he joined the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) as Assistant Professor in 2009 and was promoted to Chair Professor in 2021. He was also the Associate Dean of the College of Engineering from 2019 to 2022 and the founding Deputy Director of the Research Centre for Nature-Inspired Engineering from 2021 to 2022 at CityU. He is currently the Executive Editor-in-Chief of Droplet journal (Wiley), and Associate Editor and Advisory Board Member for ten journals.

Professor WANG is a founding member of the Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the International Society of Bionic Engineering (ISBE), Croucher Senior Research Fellow (2023), RGC Senior Research Fellow (2022), Highly Cited Researcher (Cross-field) as recognized by Clarivate (2022), and Changjiang Chair Professor as conferred by the Ministry of Education of China (2016). His work has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records and two of his inventions have won the International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva Gold Medal and Gold Medal with Congratulations of Jury, respectively. He has received many other awards including the Green Tech Award (2021), Xplorer Prize (2020), Hall of Fame (Advanced Engineering Materials, 2019), 35th World Cultural Council Special Recognition Award (2018), President's Lectureship (2020, 2018), Outstanding Research Award (Senior, 2017), and President's Award at CityU (2017, 2016). Ph.D. students he supervised have won many prestigious awards including the Grand Prize and First Prize of the Hong Kong University Student Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition (2022), Hong Kong Young Scientist Award (2015, 2019, 2022), Materials Research Society Graduate Student Gold Award (2016) and Silver Award (2015, 2021), and Hiwin Doctoral Dissertation Award (2016, 2019, 2021).

https://www.polyu.edu.hk/media/media-releases/2022/1208_polyus-associate-vp-and--chair-prof-of-me-receives-the-croucher-senior-research-fellowship-2023/

Dr REN Jingzheng, Associate Professor of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), has been selected as the sole winner of the 2022 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education (ASPIRE Prize). This is in recognition of his scientific contribution and commitment to excellence in scientific research and the spirit of cooperation with scientists from other APEC member economies under the 2022 ASPIRE Prize theme of “Innovation to achieve economic, environmental, and social goals”.

PolyU is the only higher education institution in Hong Kong to have had two young scientists honoured with this prestigious award in a single decade.

Dr REN stood out among the 13 remarkable nominees this year which was well recognised by the APEC Policy Partnership on Science, Technology, and Innovation (PPSTI) representatives. The award ceremony was held on 21 August in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Dr REN mainly focuses on waste-to-energy, the circular economy, industrial ecology, and process systems engineering. As the originator of the “sustainability-oriented decision-making and optimisation” approach that simultaneously considers economic, environmental and social goals, multiple research outcomes from him and his team have attracted the attention and interest of academia and industry and have been applied in various fields, such as sustainable design and optimisation of complex industrial systems, energy conservation and emissions mitigation of the wastewater treatment processes, valorisation of medical waste and sewage sludge, and converting agricultural waste into energy or value-added products.

“It is my great honour to win this prize. I appreciate the support of my colleagues, my department and PolyU. This good news has heartened me, and I now know I should insist on continuing what I am working on using systems thinking to solve energy and environmental problems in industrial systems and using innovative ways to achieve economic, environmental and social sustainability simultaneously.” Dr Ren said.

Besides broad collaboration with scientists from other APEC member economies, he also plans to promote a new concept that he has proposed, “scientific decision-making for the colocalisation of the complex industrial system”, and waste-to-energy processes to energy-intensive industries and the waste recycling industry of APEC member economies for a more sustainable future, as well as helping to achieve a successful transition to the Bio-Circular-Green economy.

The ASPIRE Prize is an annual award which recognises young scientists who are under the age of 40 and have demonstrated a commitment to both excellence in scientific research, as evidenced by scholarly publications, and cooperation with scientists from other APEC member economies, including inclusive and interdisciplinary collaboration.

The Mainland government has recently awarded PolyU and Professor YUNG Kai-leung the Scientific Technology Improvement Award (科學技術進步獎) for the surface sampling and packing system in Chang’e 5 space mission. The China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) has also sent the PolyU a letter of appreciation for Professor YUNG’s contribution on space instruments.

https://www.polyu.edu.hk/ise/news-and-events/news/2022/20221201-mainland-government-award/

Professor YUNG Kai-leung and his research team received the Gold Medal with Congratulations of the Jury at 2022 Geneva Invention Expo. The team is the only university in Hong Kong taking part in the Nation’s space missions in actively developing instruments for the national space mission by leveraging its expertise in precision engineering.

The award was for a project entitled “Camera Pointing System for China’s Lunar Exploration Missions (Chang'e 3 and 4)”. Installed on top of the lunar lander, it facilitates panoramic image capturing and rover movement observation on the moon, and helps construct a precision 3D model of the landscape for safe recovery. With a complex design and a weight of only 2.8 kg, it is sturdy enough to protect the camera against shock and vibration during the space mission and to ensure its proper functioning under the extreme lunar environment.

The invention was completed and successfully deployed on the front surface of the Moon with the Chang’e 3 and Moon far side with the Chang’e 4 missions of China’s Lunar Exploration Programme respectively.

The University has been awarded three of the ten grants under the Research Grants Council's (RGC) Senior Research Fellow Scheme (SRFS) 2022/23. The SRFS aims to provide sustained support to exceptionally outstanding researchers at UGC-funded universities in Hong Kong to facilitate their dedication to research and development. Professor Gang LI is one of the PolyU outstanding scholars who is conferred the title of RGC Senior Research Fellow and will receive HKD 7.7 million SRFS funding for his research project “Printable Organic Solar Cells: Materials and Device Investigations towards Applications”. Organic solar cell (OSC) is an emerging photovoltaic (PV) technology with distinct advantages in many areas, such as flexible/portable PV, building integrated PV and transparent power applications. Aiming at accelerating the OSC technology, Professor LI proposed a systematic plan to tackle the challenges in OSC. The project will significantly push forward OSC technology in terms of high efficiency, stability, compatibility with unique applications and being printing friendly. The proposed research represents a new frontier for OSC technology, which integrates chemistry, physics and material science to generate new perspectives in science and come up with solutions to challenging issues in renewable energy.

Dr Pai ZHENG from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Dr Sun Yuxiang from the Department of Mechanical Engineering were selected as Top 50 Global AI Young Chinese Scholars, AI華人青年學者榜 (in the field of AI+X).

The list was jointly released by Baidu Academic (百度學術), Baidu (TIC) (百度人才智库), Complex Management System Laboratory of Tianjin University (天津大學複雜管理系統實驗室), and the Business Intelligence Center of the International Institute of Finance in the University of Science and Technology of China (中國科大國金院商業智能中心). Selection aims to encourage young scholars to make more influential contributions and to identify high-potential young Chinese leaders in the field of artificial intelligence.

The selection was based on 186,963 papers and information on 89,324 scholars from all over the world, using big data mining technology. There were three criteria in selection: academic performance, academic influence and academic potential index. The 100 high-potential young scholars were selected in the classical fields of AI (i.e. Machine Learning, Data Mining, Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing), and 50 high-potential young scholars were selected from the interdisciplinary fields of AI (AI+X).

The 150 selected AI Young Chinese Scholars were from 98 top universities and organizations around the world. The top 10 universities or organizations with the most selected young scholars were Tsinghua University (8 scholars), Google (8 scholars), Chinese Academy of Sciences (7 scholars), Microsoft (including Microsoft Research Asia, 7 scholars), University of Hong Kong (4 scholars), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (3 scholars), Carnegie Mellon University (3 scholars), University of California San Diego (3 scholars), Columbia University (3 scholars) and Facebook (3 scholars). These scholars have made outstanding achievements in cutting-edge domains such as autonomous driving, quantum computing, dialogue systems, and biological computing, etc.