Charles Wang Wai NG 吳宏偉

Professor Charles W. W. Ng is currently the Dean of HKUST Fok Ying Tung Graduate School, CLP Holdings Professor of Sustainability and Chair Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He is also the Vice-President (Graduate Support) of HKUST (Guangzhou). He is the immediate past President of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (2017-2022), the first Chinese President since the establishment of the Society in 1936. He is a co-Editor-in-Chief of Canadian Geotechnical Journal, which is one of the top three main-stream leading journals in the field.

Professor Ng earned his PhD degree from the University of Bristol, UK in 1993. After carrying out a period of postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge between 1993 and 1995, he returned to Hong Kong and joined HKUST as Assistant Professor in 1995 and rose through the ranks to become Chair Professor in 2011. Professor Ng was elected an Overseas Fellow by Churchill College, the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering. He is also a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (UK), the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers. According to Stanford University’s publication of the top 2% Scientists Worldwide in September 2024, he is the only Chinese ranked within the top five professors, in the category of career-long impact in the sub-fields: Geological & Geomatics Engineering; Civil Engineering.

Professor Ng has supervised more than 80 PhD and 70 MPhil students to graduation from 23 countries and has published over 450 SCI journal articles and 250 conference papers with a total number of citations of over 30,500 and an H-index of 93. He has delivered more than 90 keynotes and state-of-the-art reports across six continents. He is the main author of four reference books: (i) A Short Course in Soil-Structure Engineering of Deep Foundations, Excavations and Tunnels by Thomas Telford in 2004, (ii) Advanced Unsaturated Soil Mechanics and Engineering, (iii) Plant-Soil Slope Interaction, and (iv) Advanced Unsaturated Soil Mechanics: Theory and Applications by CRC: Taylor & Francis in 2007, 2019 and 2024, respectively.

Professor Ng has received many awards including the 2022 Varnes Medal by the International Consortium on Landslides, 2022 Fredlund Award from the Canadian Geotechnical Society for the most highly cited papers in five years, 2018 and 2022 Hong Kong Institution of Engineers Best Geotechnical Paper Awards, and the 2017 Telford Premium Prize from the Institution of Civil Engineers. Moreover, he won the Teaching Excellence Appreciation Award for the academic year 2018-19 at HKUST. In the Mainland, he received the prestigious 2022 Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress（何梁何利基金科學與技術進步獎）. He was also a recipient of the 2020 National Natural Science Award (2nd class)（中國國家2020年度自然科學二等獎（排名第一））and the 2015 Scientific Technological Advancement Award (2nd class) by the State Council（中國國家2015年度科技進步獎二等獎（排名第四）), a recipient of Overseas, Hong Kong and Macau Young Scholars awarded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China（國家傑青（海外））in 2007 and a recipient of 2002 Mao Yisheng Youth Award（茅以升土力學及基礎工程青年獎）by the Chinese Institute of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering for significant contributions in Geotechnical Engineering.

He is the Chairperson of the Veterinary Surgeons Board of Hong Kong, a Member of the CEPU Expert Group of the Chief Executive’s Policy Unit and the Vice-Chair of the Hong Kong Alliance of Technology and Innovation.