In the University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP) 2019/20, PolyU was ranked third for the subject of Architecture and tenth for the subject of Civil Engineering, the only local university to be in the top ten in both subjects. This was an improvement from the field rankings in 2017/18, where PolyU was 6th and 15th in Architecture and Civil Engineering respectively.

Since 2010, URAP has ranked world universities based on academic performance indicators that reflect the quality and the quantity of their scholarly publications. As a non-profit organization, it was established at the Informatics Institute of the Middle East Technical University in Turkey.

Prof. Asif Usmani, Head of the Department of Building Services Engineering (BSE), has been appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University for 3 years with effect from July 2020. He will be contributing his expertise in teaching and research to nurture budding talents in his field.

Since joining PolyU in August 2016, Prof. Usmani has been awarded HK$33.333 million from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) Theme-based Research Scheme (TRS) 2019/20 for a 5-year project entitled “SureFire: Smart Urban Resilience and Firefighting.” He was honoured with a Faculty Award for Outstanding Performance/ Achievement in Research & Scholarly Activities in 2018/19.

A presentation ceremony for the 2019 Hong Kong Green Innovations Awards was held at the Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wanchai on 3 July 2020. Represented by Prof. Hongxing Yang of the Department of Building Services Engineering (BSE), Dr Yi Chen, a lecturer at PolyU’s College of Professional and Continuing Education, and Ms Yunran Min, a PhD student in BSE, the Renewable Energy Research Group received a certificate of merit for their indirect evaporative cooler for efficient energy recovery. Officiating guests of the ceremony included the government’s Chief Secretary for Administration the Honourable Matthew Cheung and the Secretary for the Environment the Honourable Kam-sing Wong.

Dr Charles Wong of the Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics (LSGI) has received the highest funding at PolyU from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s General Research Fund (GRF) for both 2018/19 and 2019/20. His project entitled “Development of an integrated model for estimating 3D solar energy potential using GIS, Remote Sensing and Deep Learning techniques” was supported with HK$1,210,980 in 2018/19. He followed that with another project entitled “An integrated knowledge-based Remote Sensing and GIS dynamic model for the urban thermal environment” in 2019/20, which was funded with HK$1,581,600, the highest funding from GRF for a project at PolyU in the last round.

From 1 September 2020, Prof. Hongxing Yang of the Department of Building Services Engineering (BSE) will be supervising a postdoctoral fellow, Dr Qiliang Wang, supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme 2020/21 in a 3-year project entitled “A novel integration of adaptive infrared-reflecting coating into parabolic trough solar receiver based on negative energy-flow region.”

A technical comment on fuel cells by Prof. Meng Ni of the Department of Building and Real Estate (BRE) and Prof. Zongping Shao of Nanjing Technical University and Curtin University in Australia has been published in Science. In their review of a paper in Science on a new mechanism for proton conduction, they discussed its limitations and the future of protonic ceramic fuel cells (PCFCs). Entitled “Fuel Cells that Operate at 300o – 500oC,” their commentary highlighted the applications of protonic conductors in electrochemical water-splitting for hydrogen production and electrochemical ammonia synthesis. More details are at https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6500/138.

Prof. Meng Ni is currently Associate Head (Research) of BRE and a Humboldt Fellow (Germany). His research covers fuel cells, metal-air batteries, flow batteries, and novel electrochemical cells for low grade heat recovery. He is a senior editor of Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments (Elsevier, https://www.journals.elsevier.com/sustainable-energy-technologies-and-assessments), an associate editor of the International Journal of Energy Research (Wiley, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1099114x) and the International Journal of Green Energy (Taylor & Francis, https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ljge20/current).

The Faculty of Construction and Environment (FCE) is pleased that 3 of its staff were selected for the newly created Dean’s Awards for Highly-Cited Researchers, which recognizes them for having multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% of citations in their respective fields and making a 2019 list of highly-cited researchers compiled by the Web of Science. They are Prof. Hongxing Yang of the Department of Building Services Engineering (BSE) and Prof. Kwok-wing Chau of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), both in the engineering category. Another CEE colleague, Prof. Shun-cheng Lee, was honoured in a cross-field category.

In addition, 11 FCE academics were chosen for the Dean’s Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Research Funding for their cumulative success in securing external competitive research funding in the last few years. Following are the details:

Moreover, a 5-member team led by Prof. George Liu of the Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics (LSGI) won the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Services for their outreach efforts to increase the number of exchange and/or international students. His team included Prof. John Shi, Head of LSGI, Dr Wallace Lai, Dr Matthew Pang, and Ms Anna Choi.

Each of the awardees/ winning team will receive a cash prize of HK$20,000. Award certificates will also be presented to them at the Faculty Congregation and Prize Presentation Ceremony in late October 2020.

Dr Charles Wong of the Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics (LSGI) has won a Faculty Award for Outstanding Achievement 2019/20 in Teaching. The individual award comes with a cash prize of HK$10,000 and a teaching grant of HK$100,000, which can be used for staff development, conference attendances, purchase of equipment, recruitment of personnel, etc. that support teaching, research or other academic activities, as the awardee chooses, subject to management guidelines. He will also be honoured with an award certificate at the Faculty Congregation and Prize Presentation Ceremony in October 2020.

An Exchange Forum with Gammon Construction Limited was held on 10 July 2020 at PolyU. Organized by the Faculty of Construction and Environment (FCE) to explore collaborations with industry, the event drew about 20 online participants, in addition to the physical presence of some 15 academics. After welcome speeches from the Faculty Dean, Prof. You-lin Xu, and the Executive Director of Gammon, Mr Paul Evans, FCE was introduced by Prof. Xu and Gammon by Mr Evans respectively. Subsequently, 8 academics of FCE shared their construction-related innovations, including Prof. Lin Lu, Dr Xinyan Huang, and Dr Horace Mui of the Department of Building Services Engineering (BSE), Prof. Geoffrey Shen, Associate Dean (Teaching), Prof. Songye Zhu of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), Prof. Xiaoli Ding, Associate Dean (Partnership), Prof. John Shi, Head of the Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics (LSGI), and his colleague Prof. Wu Chen. Presentations were also made by 3 representatives of Gammon: Dr David-John Gibb, Mr Andy Wong, and Mr Jeremiah To. The forum concluded with a round-table discussion led by Prof. Xiangdong Li, Associate Dean (Research), and Mr Paul Evans.

On 7 July 2020, several academics of the Faculty of Construction and Environment (FCE) met with the Consul General of Panama, Mr Jaime Andres Campuzano Melendez, and his Head Secretariat, Ms Elvira Carrera, to introduce a few of its taught postgraduate programmes to the visitors. The MSc programme in Civil Engineering was introduced by Prof. Kwok-wing Chau of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), the MSc/ PgD in Sustainable Urban Development by Prof. Hongxing Yang of the Department of Building Services Engineering (BSE), and the MSc/ PgD in Project Management by Dr Ann Yu of the Department of Building and Real Estate (BRE). The visitors also learnt about scholarship opportunities for overseas students and the application cycle. They hoped they could encourage some students from Panama to apply for the next academic year 2021/22.