Prof. Xiang-dong Li addressing the congregation

FCE staff with some graduates

A graduating class of 2021

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.

Three scholars from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) have been named by the Clarivate Analytics in the "2021 Highly Cited Researchers" as the most influential in the world. They are Prof. Kwok Wing Chau in the field of Engineering, Prof. Shuncheng Lee in a Cross-Field, and Prof. Daniel Tsang in the fields of Engineering as well as Environment and Ecology. The list identifies scholars for their exceptional research performance, as determined by the publication of multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations in each respective field. Approximately 6,600 researchers across the globe were named Highly Cited Researchers in 2021.

Formerly the intellectual property and science business of Thomson Reuters, Clarivate Analytics compiles the list from objective citation statistics available on the Web of Science, the most authoritative compendium of influence and visibility in worldwide research.

Prof. William Lam of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) has been awarded $2,195,000 from the local government’s Smart Traffic Fund (STF) for a project entitled “Network-wide Traffic Speed-Flow Estimator.” The project aims to develop a network-wide traffic speed-flow estimator for provision of real-time traffic speeds and flows simultaneously for the entire study network by time of day based on limited traffic data from different sources.

The STF was set up by the Transport Department in 2021 to provide funding support for research and application projects on vehicle-related innovation and technology with the objectives of enhancing commuting convenience, enhancing efficiency of the road network or road space, and improving driving safety.

Prof. Weng

Prof. Qihao WENG, Chair Professor and Global STEM Scholar of the Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics (LSGI), has been elected a foreign member of Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe) in its 2021 class. He is also a fellow of IEEE, AAAS, ASPRS and AAIA, and has worked as the director of the Center for Urban and Environmental Change, a professor of geography at Indiana State University from 2001 to 2021, and a senior fellow at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the US from 2008 to 2009. He received his PhD degree in geography from the University of Georgia in 1999. Prof. Weng leads the GEO Global Urban Observation and Information Initiative from 2012 to 2022, and is an editor-in-chief of ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Additionally, he serves as the editor of the Taylor & Francis Series in Remote Sensing Applications, as well as in Imaging Science.

Founded in 1988, the Academia is made up of leading experts in all branches of natural and technological sciences to advance scholarship in the respective fields. Amongst them are seventy-two Nobel Laureates, several of whom were elected to the Academia before they received the prestigious prize.

The research team of Prof. C.S. Poon, Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), has received a Silver Award in the Hong Kong Green Innovations Awards 2020 at a ceremony of the Hong Kong Awards for Environmental Excellence (HKAEE) and Hong Kong Organisation Certification (HKGOC). Their winning project is entitled “Sustainable Development of High–performance Permeable Concrete Using Local Waste Materials.”

To address the challenges of heavy rainfall and the disposal of large quantities of solid wastes in Hong Kong, the team developed a high-performance eco-permeable concrete using local waste materials. It can bring about various environmental benefits, including the reduction of waterlogging due to stormy weather, less waste disposal at landfills, improving air and groundwater quality, recharging water in soil for plant growth, mitigating the urban heat island effect and reducing road noise.

An MPhil student in the Department of Building Environment and Energy Engineering (BEEE) has been granted $600,000 from the PolyU Maker Fund Programme to develop a smart building emergency system for 2 years. Under the supervision of Dr Xinyan Huang, Mr Wong Ho Yin and his team will apply artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to a smart signage network that can guide residents towards the shortest and safest evacuation paths in a fire event. A core component of the novel smart firefighting technology developed at PolyU (the SureFire Project), the smart building emergency system will be applied to the next generation’s smart and resilient buildings that will help Hong Kong achieve the status of the world's leading smart city.

The PolyU Maker Fund Programme was established through the government’s Youth Development Fund (YDF) Funding Scheme for Youth Entrepreneurship in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. It nurtures the next generation of young entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to production by providing funding support and a 24-month incubation programme.

On 23 October 2021, Prof. Bo Wu of the Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics (LSGI) gave an online lecture on maps for space exploration to over 150 people. The lecture was part of a series of 13 talks coordinated by PolyU to introduce space sciences and technologies to secondary students and their teachers. The title of the series is “Science World: Exploring Space to Benefit Mankind.” Prof. Wu’s groundbreaking research on topographic and geomorphological mapping has contributed to the successful missions of China to land on Mars and the moon.

Details of the online lecture series are here.

Two PhD graduates of the Department of Building and Real Estate (BRE) have been thriving in their respective careers. Sr Dr Zuhaili Mohamad Ramly, a 2015 PhD graduate, was recently honoured with a University Teaching Award from the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). He has been serving as an assistant dean since 2018 at UTM’s Faculty of Built Environment and Surveying, where he oversees the portfolio on partnerships and internationalisation. He was instrumental in a virtual engagement to promote collaboration between UTM and PolyU.

Dr Jinghua Wang

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) welcomed a new assistant professor. Dr Jinghua Wang received his BEng in Harbour, Waterway and Coastal Engineering at Ocean University of China in 2010 and PhD in Hydraulic Engineering at the City, University of London in 2015. Prior to joining PolyU, he worked as a research fellow at City, University of London (2016-2019) and the National University of Singapore (2019-2021), and as an associate professor at Ocean University of China (2019-2021). Dr Wang is an expert in developing numerical tools for modelling storm surge, tsunamis, and rogue waves. His research interests focus on nonlinear wave mechanics, coastal flooding, ocean disaster mitigation and ocean renewable technologies, etc.