The 2017/18 application results for the RGC General Research Fund (GRF) and Early Career Scheme (ECS) were announced on 30 June 2017. Due to their similar nature, the application results for these 2 schemes have been combined in some of the following analysis:

In terms of the number of grants per year, CEE and BSE rank 1st and 2nd, followed by LSGI and BRE. In terms of average funding amount per academic staff member, the rankings of our 4 departments in descending order are LSGI, CEE, BSE, and BRE. Comparisons of departmental performance over the past 12 years using 2 indicators, namely, the number of grants per year and the average funding amount per academic staff member (only counting eligible staff members) are shown in Figures 1 and 2 respectively. In general, the performances of the 4 departments in recent years have varied in their ups and downs. The total number of grants awarded to our Faculty has shown a gradual and steady increase over the past 8 rounds (i.e. since 2010/11) but the average funding amount has been slightly reduced in the last 3 years.

Figure 1: Comparison of Number of Grants per Year between Departments over past 12 Years

Figure 2: Comparison of Amount of RGC Competitive Funding per Eligible Staff Member between Departments over past 12 Years

In the Civil Engineering, Surveying, Building and Construction (CESBC) disciplines of the Engineering Panel, PolyU has led the local universities in the GRF/ECS exercises since 1994/95 in both the number of GRF/ECS projects supported and the total grant value awarded, consistently winning around or over 40% of all GRF/ECS grants allocated in these disciplines. The distribution of the amount of GRF/ECS funding in the 2017/18 round among local universities is shown in Figure 3. We received 39% of the total available funding in the CESBC disciplines. The average funding per project is HK$549K.

Figure 3: Distribution of GRF/ECS Funding in the CESBC Disciplines among Institutions in the 2017/18 Round

Of the 33 GRF/ECS grants awarded to the Faculty this year, 2 were awarded outside the CESBC disciplines. The Faculty won 31 grants (or 37%) totaling HK$16,950K out of 84 GRF/ECS grants awarded by RGC in the CESBC disciplines in the present round (i.e. 2017/18). FCE colleagues are urged to work hard to ensure a greater share of GRF/ECS funding in the CESBC disciplines in the future.

The Faculty of Construction and Environment (FCE) is pleased that a number of its academics have been selected for the annual Dean’s Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the respective categories of Highly-cited Papers, Research Funding, and Technology Transfer. Following are the details of the awardees for the Dean’s Awards for Highly-cited Papers:

* Corresponding Author ^ PhD student of the Awardee # Non-PolyU author

In addition, 9 academics were selected for the Dean's Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Research Funding because of their success in securing external competitive research funding (by achieving a total score of not less than 3 from the funding schemes recognized for the Award in the past 3 calendar years, or a total score of not less than 4 in the past 5 calendar years). Details are as follows:

Last, but not least, a Dean’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Technology Transfer (Team Award) has been granted to Prof. Hongxing Yang(BSE) and his team for his project entitled “Development of Highly Dispersed Screen-printable Nanocomposite Material for Self-cleaning Solar Photovoltaic Modules and Curtain Walls.” Team members included Dr Lin Lu and Dr Yuanhao Wang, both of BSE.

Each of the above awardees will receive a cash prize of HK$20,000. The award certificates will be presented to awardees at the Faculty Congregation and Prize Presentation Ceremony 2017 in October/November.

6 academics from the Faculty of Construction and Environment have been selected by the Hong Kong Scholars Programme (HKSP) 2017 to engage a mainland scholar as a Postdoctoral Fellow in their research projects. Launched in December 2010 as a joint initiative between mainland authorities and the Society of Hong Kong Scholars, the HKSP promotes academic/ scientific exchanges and collaboration by matching outstanding mainland PhD graduates with leading academics of universities in Hong Kong, who will supervise the mainland scholars for 2 years in a research project. Following are the details:

However, the shift to the use of solar energy is not without its challenges. According to Dr Lin Lu of the Department of Building Services Engineering (BSE), the cost of installing solar panels is high, and the market for it is small. To overcome these challenges, the government is recommended to provide incentives like subsidies for people to switch to renewable energy.

Not only was it a great opportunity to exchange experiences on academic and campus life at Lanzhou University, there were also discussions of potential collaborations in several aspects, including the enhancement of academic exchanges between the two departments and further collaboration in scientific research.

Moreover, the visit to two important monitoring stations in Lanzhou provided a better idea on the current situation of air quality in Lanzhou. The itinerary also included a cultural exchange with Qinghai citizens and visits to the Kumbum Monastery, the Chaka Salt Lake and Qinghai Lake in Qinghai Province.

Prof. Patrick Lam has a wealth of professional and academic experiences since graduating from the Hong Kong Polytechnic in the 1980s. He practised for 10 years in a multi-disciplinary design office, serving as a consultant quantity surveyor and contractor/developer both in Hong Kong and Singapore. He also has substantial experience teaching undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Moreover, Prof. Lam is active in research and consultancy projects. He has won 2 external research awards and is keen to acquire new knowledge, more recently in the fields of smart cities, data centre infrastructure and renewable energy, for integration with existing knowhow related to contracts, procurement and business models.

Prof. Michael Yam has over 20 years of experience in teaching and research in structural engineering. His specialty is in structural steel research, focusing on the experimental and numerical investigation of steel members and connections as well as the application of smart materials to steel connections. Prof. Yam has also been involved in construction safety research with his BRE colleagues. He is currently Chairman (2017/18) of the Building Division at the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE). He is also the Deputy Director and Secretary General of the Chinese National Engineering Research Centre for Steel Construction (Hong Kong Branch).

A Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the HKIE and the Hong Kong Institute of Construction Managers (HKICM), Prof. Yam received his BSc degree in Civil Engineering with Distinction from the University of Alberta in Canada and subsequently completed his MSc and PhD degrees in Civil Engineering at the same university. He obtained several years of consultancy experience before he embarked on his doctoral study in 1990. He joined PolyU in 2002.

Prof. Yong Xia received both his BEng and MEng degrees from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, in 1992 and 1997 respectively. In 2002, he received his PhD from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

After working as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Tokyo, Japan, and the University of Western Australia, Prof. Xia joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2006 as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in July 2012 and professor in July 2017.

Promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor:

Dr Daniel Tsang joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2012. He was a visiting scholar at Ghent University in Belgium (2015), a visiting scholar at Stanford University in the US (2011-2013), a senior lecturer (2011-2012) and lecturer (2008-2010) at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and a post-doctoral fellow at Imperial College London in the UK (2007-2008) and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (2006-2007). With a strong link to real-world environmental challenges, his research strives to develop cost-effective and low-impact solutions to ensure sustainable urban development, enhance the engineering infrastructure, and create new ways to manage contaminated land, solid waste, and urban waters.

Promotion from Teaching Fellow to Senior Teaching Fellow:

Dr Barbara Siu received her Bachelor’s degree and PhD in Civil Engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). She joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) in 2009. Her main areas of teaching include transport planning, public transport, transport operations and management, and highway engineering. Dr Siu is actively engaged in various teaching development activities, such as service learning, internalization of students’ learning experience, and English enhancement. In recognition of her outstanding performance in teaching as well as teaching development, Dr Siu received the Departmental Teaching Excellence Award for the year 2013/14. She was appointed Programme Leader of the Higher Diploma Programme in Civil Engineering in January 2017 and promoted to Senior Teaching Fellow in July 2017.

Dr Sun’s primary research areas have been on urban planning and regional development, with particular reference to the political economy of land development, urban sustainability, and community planning. His recent research project links urban studies with public health and environment psychology, focusing on the interplays between the individual (self) and the built environment, as well as how person–environment relations promote the health and well-being of people. He is also interested in the study of community resilience in connection to climate change adaptation, particularly how community planning can help achieve inclusive and age-responsive urbanism in high-density cities like Hong Kong.

Dr Sun has published widely on the above issues in international journals such as Urban Studies, Cities, The Professional Geographer, Habitat International, and so forth. His teaching revolves around urban planning, urban sustainability, as well as land and real estate development.

The topic of his PhD research is "Development of an AR-Enhanced Tele-Operation Crane and User Interface." He studied in the computer-aided engineering group under the Department of Civil Engineering in National Taiwan University until 2013. He then served as a research fellow for the sensing, tracking and visualization group in the Australasian Joint Research Centre for Building Information Modelling at Curtin University from 2013 to 2017. His current studies include developing path re-planning algorithms for construction crane simulations; integrating RFID and vision data in the virtual environment for progress tracking and safety management; as-built modelling using laser scanned point cloud; and system integrations of BIM and inspection management database.

Dr Jiang’s major research interests are environmental applications and implications of nanotechnology, aerosol technology, and advanced water treatment. He has authored nearly 20 journal papers, which have attracted about 500 citations and considerable attention. He also has 1 international patent. He has won a number of awards, including the prestigious CH2M/AEESP Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Association of Environmental Engineering & Science Professors (AEESP), the Graduate Student Award from the American Chemical Society, and the Doctoral Research Award from Washington University in St. Louis.

Dr Tenzer completed his MSc degree in Geodesy and Cartography (1995) and his PhD study in Physical Geodesy (1999) at the Slovak Technical University. In 2008, he completed his second PhD degree in Satellite Geodesy at the Czech Technical University. Between 1997 and 2001, he lectured at the University of Zilina and the Matej Bell University. From 2001 to 2008, he held research positions at the University of New Brunswick, the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and the Delft University of Technology. After lecturing at the University of Otago (2009-2012), he became a professor at the School of Geodesy and Geomatics at Wuhan University (2012-2016). He was a senior scientist at the University of West Bohemia. His research interests cover the broad areas of geodesy, geophysics, and geodynamics, with a major focus on height reference systems, gravity field modeling, tectonics, solid earth physics, and recently planetary geophysics. The (co)author of more than 160 research journal papers, 200 conference contributions, and 4 books, he has presented his research at 40 universities worldwide. He is an editorial member for 5 journals, and has contributed as a reviewer to more than 40 different research journals (among them Nature Geosciences, Earth Science-Reviews, and Surveys in Geophysics).

Dr Wang has a solid background in computer science and spatial statistics. His research interests include uncertainty quantification and spatial analysis of earth and environmental modeling systems. Over the past several years, he has developed a series of computational approaches and tools for addressing uncertainties and complexities of earth and environmental systems, advancing our understanding of the complex behavior of dynamic systems and improving the performance of model predictions.

Dr Higgins obtained his PhD in Geography from McMaster University, Canada, in 2015. Prior to joining PolyU, he was a postdoctoral research fellow in the McMaster Institute for Transportation and Logistics at McMaster University. During his appointment at McMaster University, he worked with public and private sector partners to secure over HK$1 million in research funding. Publications generated from his research programme seek to demonstrate that economic, social, and environmental sustainability are not mutually exclusive. It is hoped that this joint appointment, the first of its kind in PolyU, will bring about and inspire more cross-disciplinary research in future.

This was the first time that the Department of Building Services Engineering (BSE) was represented in such a high-profiled national event. Miss Jiajia Niu, an MEng in BSE student, joined the competition in the postgraduate group of the South China region and won the second prize on 30 June 2017. The title of her entry was “A PMV based Fuzzy Logic Controller for a Direct Expansion Air Conditioning System and Evaluating Energy Saving Effect Using a Local Fan,” which was based on her MEng dissertation. Her supervisor was Prof. Shiming Deng.

The Postgraduate Scheme in Construction and Environment provides scholarships to outstanding applicants admitted to taught MSc programmes. For 2017/18, 15 scholarships covering the tuition fees were given to deserving applicants of the following programmes:

Yip Kwong Tsang BRE MSc in Construction and Real Estate	Wing Shan Chan BRE MSc in Construction Law and Dispute Resolution	Shung Huen Tang BRE MSc in Construction Law and Dispute Resolution	Shing Poon BRE MSc in Project Management

Kam Yuen Tony Wong BRE MSc in Project Management	Lo Chan BSE MSc in Building Services Engineering	Tung Ming Kelvin Kwok BSE MSc in Facility Management	Tsz Ling Lau BSE MSc in Facility Management

Wai Ping Chuang BSE MSc in Fire and Safety Engineering	Ho Ching Wong BSE MSc in Fire and Safety Engineering	Wing Kit Wan BSE MSc in High Performance Buildings	Chung Ho Ngan BSE MSc in High Performance Buildings

Tsz Tung Shao CEE MSc in Civil Engineering	Jianxiao Liu LSGI MSc in Geomatics (GIS)	Sheung Yee Yeung LSGI MSc in Geomatics (GIS)