The School of Engineering (SENG) held the presentation ceremony of PhD Research Excellence Awards on 27 May 2013 to celebrate this happy moment with its engineering PhD students and recent graduates. The awards are granted to those who have made the most original and influential research achievements to knowledge in the discipline during their PhD studies at HKUST.

The award scheme was launched in 2011 and this is the second time the awards are presented. This year, the Engineering Research Committee, which is chaired by Prof Ajay Joneja and consists of one faculty from each department, conducted a rigorous selection exercise and three award recipients are identified. They are Dr Xiaolei Wang from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Dr Nan Cao from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and Dr Qixing Wu from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Dr Wang and Dr Cao are 2012 graduates while Dr Wu graduated in 2011. They are currently pursuing their academic and research careers in the US and Mainland China.

Given that sharing the success on research is important to enrich its students’ experience, the School of Engineering has invited one of the awardees, Dr Qixing Wu, as the guest speaker to hold an Experience Sharing entitled “Be a Successful and Happy Researcher”. Dr Wu shared his keys to conduct good research, alleviate stress as well as keeping a good relationship with his supervisor. The talk gave insight to students and allowed them to exchange thoughts with the speaker. The ceremony and the sharing session were well received by more than 40 audiences. It is the School’s aim to establish a student platform through this kind of seminars so that good student experience can be shared among research postgraduate students.

The research accomplishments of SENG students for the past few years have been very outstanding. For example, two teams of Computer Science & Engineering PhD students won championships in the Nokia Mobile Data Challenge 2012 out of more than 200 teams worldwide. One Environmental Engineering PhD student received the Arup Research Prize 2012 for his contribution to the development of a composite adsorbent for a waste heat powered adsorption cooling system. Another Computer Science & Engineering PhD student was awarded a prestigious Google Fellowship in Mobile Computing. The student was one of only four awardees to receive a fellowship in the Greater China area. One Bioengineering PhD student is the recipient of RGC Fulbright Fellowship this year. There are only 8 recipients altogether in Hong Kong. Last but not least, a number of students were awarded different distinguished international awards like Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fellowship, Best Paper Award of IEEE International Conference etc. These all show the recognition of SENG students from the outside perspective.