Reflecting later on her choice to study engineering, Karen said she felt such a program would enable her to apply scienti c knowledge to daily life. She had wanted to join HKUST School of Engineering given its reputation and the opportunities o ered. She is now working as a Graduate Trainee at ATAL Engineering Ltd. ecent graduate Karen Ka Long Leong, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, received the prestigious ASME Arthur L Williston Medal at a ceremony at the ASME Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition in Arizona, US, in November. She was honored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for her paper on “Fuel Choice Regulation – The Way to Narrow the Gap Between Current IMO Marine Standard and Greenhouse Gas Emission Target”. Karen submitted her paper and heard the news of her success earlier this year while still a nal-year undergraduate at HKUST. The Arthur L Williston Medal is presented annually to the student or recent graduate who writes the best paper in the area of civic service. This year’s theme was “Achieving Greenhouse Gas Emissions While Creating Economic Growth and Quality of Life Bene ts”. Karen’s paper examined carbon dioxide reduction in the marine industry. She looked at biodiesel, natural gas and nuclear power as potential alternatives for ships, assessing their feasibility using a range of parameters, including technology maturity, lifecycle cost and environmental performance. R ASME Medal Winner Fuels Environmentally Friendly Marine Industry School of Engineering team won the Grand Prize in the HKIE Innovation Awards for Young Members (Category I). PhD candidate To Hung Tsui and postdoctoral research fellow Dr Tian Wei Hao, both Civil and Environmental Engineering, won the prize for developing cost-e ective technologies for wastewater treatment. The award initiative is open to all young engineers and Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE) members across all engineering elds in Hong Kong. The two researchers broke through past limitations to devise a simple yet e ective method to reengineer conventional anaerobic bioreactors. Their invention increases operational flexibility but reduces complications in building bioreactors. A HKIE Innovation Award Success as making useful connections with others in the eld (see also P ). The HKUST team was led by Prof Shaojie Shen, Electronic and Computer Engineering. HKUST is a global leader in UAV technology, and Autonomous Systems and Robotics is one of the University’s strategic areas for development. The multidisciplinary HKUST Robotics Institute was established in late to encourage University-wide engagement. he HKUST Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) team soared to fresh heights when it collected the First Prize at the International Aerial Robotics Competition (Asia/Paci c Venue), held in Beijing. The renowned competition challenges university student teams globally to advance the technical capabilities of autonomous flying machines. It was rst held at Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States in and is the longest running contest of its kind in the world. The event was brought to Asia in by the Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics, with American and Asia-Paci c venue contests now held simultaneously each year. The mission facing the HKUST team of Electronic and Computer Engineering PhD and MPhil students and an alumnus was to design a single autonomous aerial robot to drive as many ground robots as possible across a boundary within a certain time span. In doing so, team members had to overcome three main challenges: navigating an unfamiliar environment without external negotiating aids or large stationary points of reference; autonomously avoiding moving obstacles; and interaction between aerial robots and moving targets. Members also had the opportunity to meet up with students from other universities in the Asian region, gaining further insight into aerial robotics as well T Up, Up and Away ..................................................................................................................................... 24 IN FOCUS
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