CONTENTS
Dean's Message
Fall 2015 No.27
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Student Honors, Awards & Achievements
A tri-wheel robot called Rockollector, created by Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering undergraduates Kin Lap Chung (2015 graduate), Ho Wang Chung, Tze Kin Fan, Chun Ting Ng (2015 graduate), Koon Nam Wong and Siu Hong Wu (2015 graduate) received the Most Innovative Design Award at the Fourth Greater China Region Design Competition in Guangzhou in March 2015. Students were asked to design and build a vehicle that was able to pick up rocks and deposit them at a designated spot within a given time limit. The contest was hosted by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (Hong Kong Branch).
Civil and Environmental Engineering PhD student Yichuan Deng, supervised by Prof Jack Cheng, received the Best Paper Award at the 27th KKHTCNN Symposium on Civil Engineering in Shanghai. The paper was titled “Integrating BIM and GIS for Urban Planning Purposes Considering Acoustics”. The symposium forms part of an academic collaboration between Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Kyoto University (KU), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), Tongji University (TJU) in China, Chulalongkorn University (CU) in Thailand, National Taiwan University (NTU) and National University of Singapore (NUS).
PhD student Tsz Wing Fan, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, won the Best Poster Prize at Symposium JJ at the 2015 Spring Meeting of the Materials Research Society in San Francisco. Tsz Wing’s poster focused on “Peptide nucleic acid mediated dendritic growth of nucleic acid self‐assembly for amplified homogeneous electrochemical nucleic acid assay” and was chosen from more than 50 entries.
PhD candidate Ping Geng received the Chan-Tak-Kei & Wong-Kwai-Ying Best Postgraduate Award 2015. The honor was established by alumna Dr Joan Chan, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, in her parents’ names. Ping joined Prof Guohua Chen’s research group in 2010, working on solutions to tackle the membrane fouling issue during membrane separation. To date, she has filed a US patent for the unique system she designed and has presented two conference papers. She received the Best Poster Award at the 65th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Electrochemistry in Switzerland. She was also the Champion and People’s Choice award-winner in the Three Minute Thesis Competition, held by the School.
Long He, 2010 BEng Logistics Management and Engineering, won first prize in the Best Student Paper Award at the Sixth Production and Operations Management Society (POMS)-Hong Kong International Conference for his paper “Service Region Design for Urban Electric Vehicle Sharing Systems”. PhD candidate Zhenghua Long, Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management, received second prize for his paper “Virtual Allocation Policies for Many-Server Queues with Abandonment”. Zhenghua graduated in 2015.
Civil and Environmental Engineering PhD candidate Duruo Huang, supervised by Prof Gang Wang, received the Best Student Presentation Award from the Hong Kong Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at the Society’s 19th Annual Conference in March 2015.
Undergraduates Leviero and Andrianto Lie, Computer Science and Engineering, won the HKUST President’s Cup for their final year project “Turn Any Computer Screen into a Gesture-Assisted Touch Screen Using a Leap Motion Controller”. An interdisciplinary team of seven second-year students received the Gold Award for the “Real-Time Display of Machine Status” project. Team members were Zhiyu Chen, Finance, Yunpeng Cui, Economics, Yangyang Duan, Life Science, I-Hsuan Kao, Physics, Mengyuan Li, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Xinzhu Liu, Dual Degree Program in Technology and Management, and Yuchen Liu, Electronic and Computer Engineering. The Silver Award went to Haoning Tang, Electronic and Computer Engineering, for the project “Grid Optimization of Large-Area OLED Lighting Panel Electrode”. Leviero and Andrianto graduated in 2015 and the other students remain undergraduates.
Four papers by Electronic and Computer Engineering PhD students, doctoral graduates, and professors were presented at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), also known as “Chip Olympiad” and held in San Francisco in February 2015. Papers comprised “Wireless Power Transfer System Using Primary Equalizer for Coupling- and Load-Range Extension in Bio-Implant Applications” by Xing Li; “A 123-Phase DC-DC Converter-Ring with Fast-DVS for Microprocessors” by Yan Lu and Junmin Jiang; “A 2-/3-Phase Fully-Integrated Switched-Capacitor DC-DC Converter in Bulk-CMOS for Energy-Efficient Digital Circuits with 14% Efficiency Improvement” by Junmin, Yan and Cheng Huang; and “A 70.5-to-85.5GHz 65nm Phase-Locked Loop with Passive Scaling of Loop Filter” by Zhiqiang Huang.
 
In addition, Lin Cheng won a Predoctoral Achievement Award while Junmin received a Student Travel Grant Award, both given by the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society. Zhiqiang, Junmin and Xing received Analog Devices ISSCC Outstanding Student Designer Awards. Yan and Cheng graduated in 2014, and Xing in 2015. Junmin, Zhiqiang and Lin remain PhD students.
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering PhD student Feng Ni and Electronic and Computer Engineering undergraduate Chun Sing Poon received the Global Youth Innovator Award for their Smart Ruler project at the first 2015 International Contest of Applications in Nano-Micro Technologies (iCAN) Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2015. Fifteen international teams took part. The Smart Ruler offers a new application for multiple Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) sensors integrated with a low-cost microcontroller unit chip and signal processing program to help children learn mathematics.
 
In addition, engineering undergraduates Alexander Yu Tse and Chen Tang, both Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Chun Sing Poon, Electronic and Computer Engineering, won second prize at iCAN 2015 in Alaska in June 2015 for their project, Air Hand. The device could perform handling and manipulation of different objects without complicated controls.
MSc student Jiayi Qiu, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, received the Star of Hope Award in the 2014-15 You Bring Charm to the World Awards for his research on sustainable building design. The annual awards were initiated by Phoenix TV in 2006 and recognize the achievements of Chinese people from all over the world. Eleven awards were presented, with Jiayi, who graduated in 2015, among the youngest winners.
Civil and Environmental Engineering undergraduate Pui San So, supervised by Prof Charles W W Ng, won the Association of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Specialists (Hong Kong) Final Year Projects Competition 2015 for his “Effects of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) on Hydraulic and Mechanical Properties of Vegetated Soil” project. He is now an MPhil student in the same department.
Undergraduate Ambi Cheuk Ho Yuen, Electronic and Computer Engineering, won the Gold Prize at the international session of the Capstone Design Fair of Engineering Education Festa 2014, held in South Korea. His award-winning project, “Sally, Multi-Purpose Micro Swarm Robotics System”, performs basic collective functions, including aggregation, dispersion and pattern formation, and can be used to assist in rescues, entertainment and swarm behavior research. More than 300 projects were exhibited. Ambi is now an MPhil student in the same department.