Core Members

Ir Professor Ben Young is Vice President (Student Affairs) of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He was Associate Dean of the Graduate School at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning – Taught Postgraduate program of the Faculty of Engineering, Master of the Graduate House, and a professor of structural engineering in the Department of Civil Engineering of HKU. Professor Young was Deputy Department Head of the Department of Civil Engineering at HKU from 2011 to 2017 and the founding Warden of Suen Chi Sun Hall at HKU from 2005 to 2014. He was also the Warden of Hall #3 at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology from 2003 to 2004. Professor Young received BSc, BEng and PhD degrees from the University of Sydney, Australia in 1991, 1993 and 1998, respectively.

Professor Young represented the Graduate School of HKU and participated in the “Framework for the Internationalization of Doctoral Education (FRINDOC)” project as one of the six steering committee members and the only committee member from Asia. The FRINDOC project was initiated by the European University Association (EUA) that has more than 800 higher education institutions in 48 countries in Europe. The aim of the project was to develop an online tool to help different institutions to review their internationalization of doctoral education and identify good practices. Furthermore, Professor Young was the co-initiator and developer of the HKU Hall Education Development project, i.e. seminars, workshops and overseas experiential learning trips designed to achieve the university’s aims for hall education.

Professor Young served as a panel member for the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2014 in the Built Environment Panel under the University Grants Committee, Research Grants Council (RGC) Hong Kong. He also served as a panel member for the General Research Fund (GRF) on the Engineering Panel of the RGC Hong Kong from 2010 to 2016. Professor Young was one of the code writers for the “Hong Kong Code of Practice for the Structural Use of Steel” published by the Buildings Department, The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). He is currently a member of the Accreditation Advisory Board under the Innovation and Technology Commission, HKSAR.

His research interests include cold-formed steel structures, testing and design of steel structures, high strength steel structures, stainless steel structures, aluminium structures, structural stability, fire resistance of metal structures and engineering education. Professor Young is currently a Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Constructional Steel Research, ELSEVIER. He is also serving as a member of editorial boards for ten other journals. He has published over 500 international journal and conference papers, of which over 230 are SCI indexed journal papers. He has an h-index of 39 in Scopus. According to the ISI’s essential science indicators, Professor Young has been listed for many years in the “Top 1% scholars” for highly cited papers.

Professor Young received the Bechtel Foundation Engineering Teaching Excellence Award in 2003, and the Michael G. Gale Medal for Distinguished Teaching Award in 2004 from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He also received the Best Teacher Award in 2006, the Outstanding Young Researcher Award in 2006, the Outstanding Teaching Award in 2008, the Outstanding Research Student Supervisor Award in 2015 and the Outstanding Researcher Award in 2017 from The University of Hong Kong. Professor Young also received the Best Research Paper Award given by the Journal of Structures, ELSEVIER in 2016. Professor Young was previously an adjunct professor at Zhejiang University and guest professor at Tongji University.

• Bachelor of Science, The University of Sydney
• Bachelor of Engineering in Civil Engineering, The University of Sydney
• Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Sydney

• Fellow of the Hong Kong Institute of Steel Construction
• Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers
• Fellow of The Hong Kong Institution of Engineers