HKUST Professor Wins Hong Kong’s First Calvin W Rice Lecture Award
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.
Founded in 1934, the Calvin W Rice Lecture Award is given annually in preference to a lecturer whose accomplishments have been achieved abroad, with an aim to increase understanding among engineers across countries. Prof Lee is the second recipient of this award in history from the Greater China Region (the first was Prof Wei Yang, the former President of Zhejiang University).
Being the first Hong Kong’s scholar winning this award, Prof Lee said, “It is my greatest honor to be selected as a winner of the internationally renowned Calvin W Rice Lecture Award this year. I am sincerely grateful to those who have supported me all the way through my dedication in the mechanical engineering globally in the past years, and I hope to continue to contribute to society in the future.”
As a renowned expert on electronic and LED packaging, Prof Lee sees the need for LEDs to catch up with the uprising trend in the integrated circuit (IC) industry to migrate from chip-based packaging to wafer level packaging (WLP). Hence, he has led his team of researchers to investigate the trend of using advanced LED WLP technologies and studied how it could achieve high throughput and low cost manufacturing since 2007. Apart from his own research interests, Prof Lee hopes to leverage the expertise in R&D and technology transfer of the HKUST LED-FPD Technology R&D Center to foster the growth of HKUST-developed LED packaging and manufacturing technologies to the solid-state lighting industries in Foshan and neighboring areas for subsequent development and commercialization, which will ultimately enhance the competitiveness of Mainland industries.
Prof Lee also has concurrent appointments as Associate Dean of HKUST Fok Ying Tung Graduate School, Director of HKUST Shenzhen Research Institute, General Manager of HKUST R and D Corporation (Shenzhen) Limited, and Director of HKUST LED-FPD Technology R&D Center at Foshan, Guangdong, China.
Prof Lee received his BSc and MSc degrees from Taiwan University and Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University respectively. In 1992, Prof Lee graduated from Purdue University with a PhD degree in Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering where he completed his one-year post-doctoral research after graduation. Prof Lee started his academic career at HKUST in 1993. In addition, Prof Lee has co-authored three books and received ten best/outstanding paper awards and five major professional society awards. Prof Lee is also a fellow of ASME, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), International Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging Society (IMAPS), Institute of Physics (UK), as well as an Distinguished Lecturer and the Junior Past-President of IEEE Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology (IEEE CPMT) Society.