News & Stories

Five undergraduate students from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) came second among 153 teams – comprising mostly postgraduate students and professionals, in the first and biggest national aircraft design competition organized by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC). The “Soaring Dragon” is a two-seater amphibious aircraft featuring a pair of hydrofoils at the bottom that minimizes the take-off distance on water, a downward folding wing tip that warns pilots of water breaches and foldable wings which allows flexible movements and storage on ground. The students who created “Soaring Dragon” will be invited to join an expert team at HKUST commissioned to build a similar model for the private aviation market in Mainland China.

The Kellogg-HKUST Executive MBA (EMBA) program maintains its world’s leading position and has been ranked No. 2 in this year’s Financial Times EMBA Ranking. Since 2007 the program has been consistently ranked among the world’s best clinching No.1 for six years and No.2 for two years. The program is jointly offered by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s School of Business and Management (HKUST Business School) and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Since its launch in 1998, the program has been committed to delivering a premier learning experience for senior executives to understand the business perspectives of the two most dynamic regions in the world.

Three distinguished professors from the University attended a luncheon on October 15 to receive awards as the top scientists in the globe by Thomson Reuters for their outstanding research achievements. The trio included in the list of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds 2014 are Prof Benzhong Tang, - Stephen Kam-chuen Cheong Professor of Science, Chair Professor of Chemistry and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Prof Tianshou Zhao, Chair Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at HKUST, Director of the HKUST Energy Institute, and a Senior Fellow of the HKUST Institute for Advanced Study; and Dr Jacky W Y Lam from theDepartment of Chemistry.

Prof Ricky Shi-wei Lee, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Director of Center for Advanced Microsystems Packaging (CAMP) at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) was selected as the winner of the 2014 Calvin W Rice Lecture Award by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for his contribution to the mechanical engineering society across the world.  Prof Lee is the first scholar in Hong Kong to have won this prestigious award.  Prof Lee will deliver the Calvin W Rice Lecture at the annual ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition Conference (IMECE) which is to be held in Montreal, Canada in November 2014.

The team “EnerBy” from HKUST won the energy management company Schneider Electric’s Global Business Case Challenge “Go Green in the City 2014” that was held in Paris from 17-21 June 2014. The winning team, which comprises of Keith Chan Jin-Deng and Jasmine Lee Man-Ki, students of BSc in Environmental Management and Technology program at HKUST, beat over 10,000 students from all over the world with their business case Energy Forecast Program. The program integrates smart plugs to allow smart metering through a mobile application. The HKUST students’ entry is a mobile application that bills customers before using electricity, allowing people to efficiently monitor and manage their use of energy consumption.

Professor Irene Lo of Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has been elected as an Academician (Technical and Environmental Sciences) of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (EASA). She is the first Hong Kong scholar inducted into the EASA. Based in Salzburg, Austria, the EASA is an interdisciplinary network of scholars from various fields focusing on scientific, social, cultural and ethical issues. The Academy’s seven branches include humanities, medicine, arts, natural sciences, social sciences/law and economics, technical and environmental sciences, and world religions. As of today, it has more than 1,500 members, including 29 Nobel Laureates.

Prof Wenkai He, Associate Professor from the Division of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), became a co-winner of 2014 Barrington Moore Book Award of the American Sociological Association (ASA) on comparative and historical sociology. He is the first scholar from a non-American university to have won this prestigious award. Prof He’s publication “Paths Toward the Modern Fiscal State”, which compares the history of modern public finance between England, Japan and China, is hailed by his peers as “a genuinely important piece of scholarship that has the potential to become a benchmark in the literature.” It is now an assigned reading for postgraduate students in several top American universities including the University of Chicago.

Prof Yilong Han, Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) was awarded the 2014 Achievement in Asia Award (AAA) for his distinguished contributions in melting transition, glass transition and the observation of geometrical frustration through creative experiments in colloidal dynamics. The award was shared by Prof Han and Prof Wang Yao, Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Hong Kong. Presented by the International Organization of Chinese Physicists and Astronomers (OCPA), the annual award acknowledges only one or two Chinese scientists below 50 years of age and working in Asia for their outstanding achievements in the field of physics and astronomy. Prof Han will receive his award at the meeting of the American Physics Society in March 2015.