secondment to a geotechnical engineering team when working at a leading international engineering consultancy rm in the UK in the late s provided the earth-shattering realization for then young graduate structural engineer Charles W W Ng as to his future career path. Delving deep “The team was looking into a technical design involving excavation – four stories deep – and next to the River Thames,” recalled Prof Ng, who joined the School of Engineering in and is now Chair Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “When I saw that even a major consultancy was nding this challenging, I knew it must be an area worth researching.” It was a surprise move, particularly for Prof Ng, who had previously envisaged doing an advanced structural engineering at his master’s study but switched to reading a PhD focused on geotechnical engineering. As a master’s student, he had rated the geotechnical area among the most di cult subject for anyone to do well in. But do well he certainly has, becoming a world authority on unsaturated soil mechanics, slope stability and sustainability, and winning multiple awards east and west for his research, most recently a State Scienti c and Technological Progress Award, Second Class, one of the State Council’s highest honors. Research goldmine “From day one, I have had a curious mind,” he said. “This accidental assignment sparked my interest and I discovered a goldmine for research there.” Prof Ng undertook his PhD at the University of Bristol, UK, combining his knowledge of structures and his deepening understanding of soil mechanics to undertake novel research on soil-structure interaction and multi-propped excavation. He then became as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Cambridge, a world leader in soil mechanics and centrifuge modeling, before being recruited by HKUST to take the eld forward in Asia and beyond. His specialty on his return to Hong Kong became unsaturated soil mechanics, realizing this complex area was still waiting to be explored more widely, locally and globally, and starting one of the rst postgraduate courses on the subject in Asia in the late s. Application-wise, an interest in slopes was a natural corollary of living in Hong Kong, with its hilly terrain and buildings perched at all levels. Prof Ng later moved from studying loose- ll slopes (Hong Kong has over , ) stabilizing with soil nails to green slopes using plants as stabilizers. His respect for the natural materials he works with continues to grow: “I have found soils to be extremely clever. Why? If you really know them, you know they have a memory, known technically as the over consolidation ratio. Soil properties are di erent from man-made materials. Just like humans, they are stress dependent. If you push them lightly, they respond di erently from if you push them hard. They are also path dependent, which means they vary depending on their direction of natural geological or applied loading path, similar to humans.” Unearthing the Cleverness Prof Charles W W Ng has made studying the complexities of soil his life work, creating fresh hope for managing landslides and slope stability through geotechnical, geo-environmental and bio-engineering, and even nding similarities with human behavior A 4 IN FOCUS
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