In Focus, Issue No. 17

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Dean's Message

Teaching Excellence

New Appointments

Research

Alumni

PTC-G13335

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Research

Academic Excellence

06 Co-Chair Prof Ricky Lee, Mechanical Engineering, held at HKUST, conference

www.asmeconferences.org/MicroNano08/index.cfm,

N e w s l e t t e r N o . 1 7 W i n t e r 2 0 0 9

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Prof Jack Lau, alumnus, academic and entrepreneur, has made a habit of standing out from the crowd. In 1994, he became HKUST’s first PhD graduate when he gained his doctorate in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Since then he has gone on to enjoy a successful dual career as a professor in the Electronic and Computer Engineering Depar tment at the School of Engineering and an entrepreneur. Now he has received four key awards in a single month and led his innovative hi-tech company to become the fir st HKUST spin-off to list in Hong Kong.

In October, Prof Lau, who is also CEO and Chairman of Perception Digital, a state-of-the-ar t technology solutions company, won the Grand Prize (all categories) and Gold Award (Consumer Electronics) in the Hong Kong Electronic Industry Association Awards for Outstanding Innovation and Technology Products. He was named an Er nst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. He also received the 2009 E x c e l l e n c e i n A c h i e ve m e n t o f Wo r l d C h i n e s e Yo u t h Entrepreneurs accolade.

Award-winning PhD Graduate Leads

First HKUST Spin-off to List in Hong Kong

Prof Lau is no stranger to award ceremonies, having also been named one of Hong Kong’s Ten Outstanding Young Persons in 2000 and a Young Industrialist of Hong Kong in 2005. But despite his many accomplishments, he remains modest in his outlook. “I know I will not be the biggest, richest and best-known businessman. My goal is just to be as good as I can be. My rewards come when I do just that,” he said recently in HKUST Alumni News.

Perception Digital was initially star ted under HKUST’s Entrepreneurship Program in 1999 and has now evolved into the University’s largest spin-off company, with a staff of more than 250. It has pioneered technology solutions in digital sequel processing and turn-key consumer electronics. In December, Perception Digital made another ground-breaking move by listing on Hong Kong’s Growth Enterprise Market becoming the first HKUST-associated star t-up to do so. The offer was over-subscribed.

Pe r s e v e r a n c e a n d t h e a b i l i t y t o m e e t a n d b e a t t h e unexpected are essential qualities in an entrepreneur, according to Prof Lau.

The dynamic trailblazer has also been keen to help others benefit from the oppor tunities that education can bring. He has set up the Dr. Jack Lau School of Engineering Scholarship for Mainland High School Students to enable talented youngsters from Mainland China to study at HKUST.

Alumni relationships are invaluable assets to the School and alumni. To foster the growth of our alumni network, please keep us informed of your recent news and send us your updated contact information via email to [email protected].

Stay connected and keep in touch!

Don't be the Missing Link ...

Editors: Diana Liu, Cherry Au Contributing Editor: Sally Course Address: School of Engineering

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Phone: (852) 2358-8446 Fax: (852) 2358-1458 Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.seng.ust.hk

Calendar of Events

The above events are subject to change without prior notice

February 1-5, 2010

Civil Engineering and Development Department 5th Anniversary Roving Exhibition cum Presentation

The HK Jockey Club Atrium, HKUST

February 6, 2010

IBM Inter-University Programming Contest 2010 HKUST Campus

February 10, 2010

IT Career Talk Time: 6:30-8:00 p.m. Venue: HKUST Campus

March 2010

Fourth International Lean Six Sigma Conference (ILSSC) Organized by the Six Sigma Institute (SSI) and co-organized by the Department of Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management, held at HKUST

April 23-24, 2010

RoboCupJunior Hong Kong 2010 S.H. Ho Sports Hall, HKUST

http://www.rcj-hk.org

Faculty Honors, Awards and Achievements

■ Dean of the School of Engineering Prof

Khaled Ben Letaief won the Best Paper A w a r d a t t h e I E E E I n t e r n a t i o n a l Communications Conference held in Dresden, Germany, in June. His paper, "Minimum Sum Expected Distor tion in

Cooperative Networ ks", was co-authored by MPhil g r a d u a t e S h a o l e i R e n , E l e c t r o n i c a n d C o m p u t e r Engineering. Prof Ben Letaief has also been elected Vice-President of the IEEE Communications Society. The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) has 455,000 members and student members in more than 160 countries. The IEEE Communications Society is the second largest within IEEE and the wor ld's leading organization for professionals in communications. Voting for the office of Vice-President is held every two years by members from all over the world.

■ Prof Chi Ming Chan, Chemical and

Biomolecular Engineering, has been named one of Top 50 Authors (Most Cited, 2000-2008) in Polymer, which publishes original research on polymer science and technology. A paper by

Prof Chan and his research team was also included in the Top 20 Cited Ar ticles list (2000-2002). The paper, “Polypropylene/ calcium carbonate nanocomposites” appeared in Volume 43, Issue 10, published in March 2002.

■ Prof GH Chen, Civil and Environmental

E n g i n e e r i n g , w i l l b e t h e p l e n a r y ke y n o t e s p e a ke r a t t h e 7 t h I WA Leading-edge Technology in Water and Wastewater Conference held from J u n e 2 - 4 , 2 0 1 0 i n A r i z o n a . T h e

conference is the world’s leading international forum focused on water science and technology.

■ A n a r t i c l e b y P r o f V C h i g r i n o v,

Electronic and Computer Engineering, was named one of the 10 most heavily cited and influential papers published in the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics since the publication’s first volume in

1962. The ar ticle, “Surface-Induced Parallel Alignment of Liquid Crystals by Linearly Polymerized Photopolymers”, was co-written with M Schadt, K Schmitt and V Kozinkov. Paper s were selected from various fields of applied physics by the journal’s editorial board.

■ P r o f M o u n i r H a m d i , C o m p u t e r

Science and Engineering, won the B e s t P a p e r A w a r d a t t h e C o m mu n i c a t i o n s S o f t w a r e a n d S e r v i c e s S y m p o s i u m , I E E E I n t e r n a t i o n a l C o n f e r e n c e o n Communications 2009. The event

was held in Dresden, Germany from June 14-18. The award-winning paper "Suppor ting VCR-like operations in der ivative tree-based P2P streaming systems" was co-authored by Tianyin Xu, Jianzhong Chen, Wenzhong Li, Sanglu Lu and Yang Guo.

■ T h e p a p e r, " E l e c t r o c h e m i c a l Te c h n i q u e s o n

Sequence-Specific PCR Amplicon Detection for Point-of Care Applications, by Prof I-Ming Hsing, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and his group was selected as a "Hot Article" in the Analyst. The journal, a RSC publication, publishes high-quality work in analytical, bioanalytical, and detection science.

■ P r o f I - M i n g H s i n g h a s a l s o b e e n

invited to become the fir st Chinese R e g i o n a l E d i t o r o f t h e j o u r n a l

Electroanalysis. This new position,

star ting in 2010, reflects the increasing number of submissions or iginating

from research institutions in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Prof Hsing will be responsible for reviewing and decisions on all manuscripts from t h e Greater China region. Electroanalysis is a top inter national for um for fundamental and applied research in electroanalytical chemistr y and one of the leading journals in electrochemistry.

■ Prof Ricky Lee, Mechanical Engineering,

received the Significant Contribution A w a r d f o r E l e c t r o n i c P a c k a g i n g Technologies from the Chinese Institute of Electronics – Electronics Manufacturing & Packaging Technology Society. The award

was presented at the International Conference on Electronic Packaging Technology & High Density Packaging, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in Beijing in August 2009.

■ New HKUST professor Ho Yin Mak,

Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management, received an Honorable Mention at the SOLA-AIR Products Bi-annual Disser tation Award. His disser tation examined “Integr ated

Supply Chain Design Under Uncer tainty”. The award is sponsored by INFORMS and Air Products and Chemicals, Inc, and focuses on location analysis.

■ P r o f Yo n g l i M i , C h e m i c a l a n d

B i o m o l e c u l a r E n g i n e e r i n g , a n d r e s e a r c h e r s f r o m A r i z o n a S t a t e Univer sity have , for the fir st time , constr ucted a DNA 3D object by a single strand DNA and successfully

cloned the DNA 3D in vivo. The milestone research has been published in the Journal of the American Chemical

Society.

■ Prof Charles Ng, Civil and Environmental

E n g i n e e r i n g , h a s b e e n a p p o i n t e d vice-chair of the newly established board-level Innovation Development Committee of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical

Engineering (ISSMGE). The ISSMGE is a professional body representing the interests of engineers, academics and contractor s that actively par ticipate in geotechnical engineering. It has a worldwide membership of over 18,500.

■ Prof Huamin Qu, Computer Science and

E n g i n e e r i n g , r e c e i ve d a 2 0 0 9 I B M Faculty Award, the only recipient from Hong Kong this year. The competitive, wor ldwide awards progr am foster s collaboration between researchers at

l e a d i n g u n i v e r s i t i e s a n d t h o s e i n I B M r e s e a r c h , development and services organizations. It also promotes cour seware and curriculum innovation to stimulate growth in disciplines and geographies strategic to IBM.

■ Prof Richard So, Industrial Engineering

and Logistics Management, has been m a d e a F e l l ow o f t h e H o n g K o n g Ergonomics Society. He also delivered a keynote speech at the society’s annual general meeting in June.

■ Prof Fugee Tsung, Industrial Engineering

and Logistics Management, has been elected a Fellow of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers. In addition, Prof Tsung’s paper on “Statistical Monitoring of Multi-stage Processes Based on

Engineering Models” in IIE Transactions in 2008 was named among the most-cited articles from 2006-2008.

■ Prof Jiang Xu, Electronic and Computer

Engineering, and his team have been awarded the Best Paper – Honorable Mention Award at the IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI ( I S V L S I ) 2 0 0 9 f o r t h e i r p a p e r " A

Low-power Low-cost Optical Router for Optical Networks-on-Chip in Multiprocessor Systems-on-Chip”. The acceptance rate for this year’s ISVLSI was 25%.

■ P r o f M a t t h e w Yu e n , M e c h a n i c a l

Engineering, won the IEEE Component P a c k a g i n g a n d M a n u f a c t u r i n g Technology Society and ASE Group Best Conference Paper Award. The award-winning paper, "Hydrophobic

Self-assembly Monolayer Str ucture for Reduction of Interfacial Moisture Diffusion", was co-authored with Haibo Fan and Cell KY Wong. The paper was presented at the International Conference on Electronic Packaging Technology & High Density Packaging. Prof Yuen was also a keynote speaker at the AMD Technology Forum and Exhibition for multimedia and graphics platforms and hardware applications. The event took place in Taipei in October.

■ N e w H K U S T a c a d e m i c P r o f J i h e n g

Z h a n g , I n d u s t r i a l E n g i n e e r i n g a n d Logistics Management, was awarded an H o n o r a bl e M e n t i o n a t t h e a n n u a l G e o r g e N i c h o l s o n S t u d e n t Pa p e r Competition for his report “Fluid Models

of Many-server Queues with Abandonment”. The contest honors outstanding papers in operations research and management sciences written by a student.

■ Two papers by faculty and students from the Electronic

and Computer Engineer ing depar tment have been accepted for the 2010 International Solid-State Circuits C o n f e r e n c e ( I S S C C ) , a l s o k n o w n a s “ t h e C h i p Olympics”, in San Fr ancisco in Febr uar y 2010. The ISSCC is the foremost for um for presentation of advances in solid-state circuits and systems-on-a-chip. The first HKUST paper, “EPC Gen-2 System-On-Chip Passive UHF RFID Tag with Embedded Temperature Sensor”, is co-authored by Jun Yin, Jun Yi, M Law, M Ling, P Lee, B Ng, B Gao, HC Luong, A Bermak, M Chan, WH Ki, CY Tsui and M Yuen. The second paper, "A Two-Phase S w i t c h i n g H y b r i d S u p p l y M o d u l a t o r f o r Po l a r Tr ansmitter s with 9% Efficiency Improvement", is co-authored by Y Wu and P Mok.

Active Start for

School-based

Admission Students

Academic Excellence

Teaching and Learning

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With the introduction of School-based Admission Scheme (SB A), fir st-year undergraduates joining the School of Engineering (SENG) in 2009-10 have enjoyed a more flexible start to their studies, along with a series of fun activities to help them settle in to university life.

School-based Admission enables students to learn about different fields of engineering before deciding on their major as they are initially admitted to the School rather than individual programs. This is particularly useful for students interested in several engineering fields. Majors are only selected at the end of the first semester.

When applying to join SENG, students can choose either Engineering A, covering chemical, civil and mechanical engineering programs, or Engineering B, which embraces computing, electronic and engineering management programs. The two streams t o g e t h e r e n c o m p a s s a l l o f S E N G ’s undergraduate programs.

In their first semester, students in both Engineering A and Engineering B take a series of introductory courses providing a broad foundation in engineering and knowledge

about different fields. Students should then have a better idea of their academic strengths and interests when choosing their major. To ensure the first cohort of School-based Admission students have been able to adapt effectively, interviews were carried out in October to find out more about their experiences and to assist the School in answering any concerns. Each School-based Admission student has also been assigned an academic advisor who can be contacted for advice on subjects and study paths as well as personal issues.

In addition, a number of activities to help School-based Admission students get to know each other, within and across the two streams, have been organized, including a fancy dress Halloween Par ty and an enter taining dodgeball contest, which involved students from other departments.

HKUST Helps to Activate

Global Study on Urban Water

Prof GH Chen, Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been actively involved in establishing a multinational research project involving the vital environmental topic of water supplies for the world’s fast-growing number of cities.

The study is being developed through UNESCO-IHE, which strengthens the effor ts of other universities and research centers to build professional knowledge and skills in the water sector. Its Institute of Water Education is the largest facility devoted to this field in the world.

The project, “Salt and Brackish Water as Secondary Quality Water for Urban Environments”, involves researchers from around the world including HKUST, UNESCO-IHE, Delft University of Technology, University of Cape Town, Kiwa Water Research in The Netherlands and institutions in Palestine and Cuba.

Geotechnical Lecture Series Honors

Professor Emeritus

The first Wilson Tang Lecture, a lecture series established as a tr ibute to Wilson H Tang, Professor Emer itus of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was given at the Second International Symposium on Geotechnical Safety and Risk (ISGSR) in Japan in June.

Prof Tang is a founding researcher in the area of geotechnical reliability and risk and his breakthroughs have led to many fresh insights in the field. The Wilson Tang Lecture will be the

highlight of future ISGSR symposiums and serve as a way to honor distinguished peers and their achievements. The first lecture was delivered by Prof TH Wu from Ohio State University.

The June symposium was organized by the Geotechnical Safety Network and TC23 and TC32 of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering.

Regional Supply Chain Insights

The growing role of Greater China and Singapore in the global supply chain for ser vices and manufacturing was the theme of a thought-provoking talk by Prof Fugee Tsung, H e a d o f t h e D e p a r t m e n t o f I n d u s t r i a l a n d L o g i s t i c s Management, at the Institute of Industrial Engineers (Hong Kong)’s annual dinner earlier in the year.

Prof Tsung, IIE’s Regional Vice President (Asia) and the event’s Distinguished Speaker, shared his insights on “Recent Development of Industrial Engineering in Greater China”. The talk included an over view of recent moves in industrial engineering in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.

Accolades for SENG’s Outstanding Teachers

Faculty Members

■ Prof Ho Yin Mak

Assistant Professor, Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management

PhD - University of California, Berkeley

■ Prof Jiheng Zhang

PhD - Georgia Institute of Technology

Visiting Faculty

■ Prof Dunren Che

Associate Professor, Computer Science and Engineering PhD - Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics

■ Prof Qi Fu

Visiting Scholar, Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management

PhD - Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

■ Prof Tingting Ji

■ Prof Emma MacPherson

Assistant Professor, Electronic and Computer Engineering PhD - University of Cambridge

Administrative

■ Prof Khaled Ben

Letaief

Appointed Dean of Engineering

■ Prof Fugee Tsung

Appointed Head of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management

HKUST Unmanned Helicopter

Takes Off for Mount Everest

Histor y was made in the summer when researchers from the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering successfully carried out a series of test flights with their unmanned helicopter, Zhufeng Explorer, including the world’s first autonomous flight to Mount Everest.

The tests were carried out over 10 days in June by Prof Zexiang Li, his postgraduate student Frank Wang and their project team. The field trials covered a number of different locations in Tibet, enabling the collection of a large set of data for future research on unmanned aviation and the safeguarding of high-altitude environments. As well as Mount Everest, the helicopter flew over lakes, a glacier and a maiden forest.

Zhufeng Explorer can take photographs and videos during flight and send the signals simultaneously to a ground control station. The two-meter flying machine can also carry atmospheric data monitoring equipment.

The main challenge, according to Prof Li, was the climatic conditions at high altitudes, such as the thin air and very strong winds. “I was delighted with the outcome of the mission and foresee further use for unmanned helicopters in the surveying and protection of highland ecology in the future,” he said.

The innovative independent helicopter is equipped with a global positioning system (GPS), on-board inertia measurement units and is capable of flying on a pre-programmed flight path. It weighs about 10kg. When powered by electric battery, Zhufeng Explorer can fly over a radius of 50km. If propelled by diesel, it can cover a radius of 200km. “The technology offers an exciting range of current and potential applications,” Prof Li said.

The HKUST team is one of the top research groups on unmanned helicopters in China. It was also the first to use an unmanned helicopter to carry out surveillance and damage assessment after the Sichuan earthquake in May 2008.

Prof David Rossiter, Computer Science and Engineering, has been a w a r d e d t h e t o p accolade in the School of Engineering’s 2008-09 Teaching Excellence Appreciation Award honors list. The annual awards recognize dedication and outstanding performance in teaching undergraduate courses at the School. Prof Rossiter received the Distinguished Teaching Award, with Prof Amine Bermak, Electronic and Computer Engineering and Prof Yu-Hsing Wang, Civil and Environmental Engineering gaining Teaching Awards.

Prof Rossiter was recognized for the enthusiasm he inspires

among students, as shown through their quantitative and qualitative assessments of his teaching, and his ability to expand students’ thinking and learning capabilities. He has actively participated in curriculum redesign and also fostered development of teaching technologies within and outside HKUST. His Gong and NanoGong web-based audio communication systems, f o r e x a m p l e , h a v e assisted the teaching of languages skills at HKUST for over

four years.

SENG Excels Again

in International Rankings

The School of Engineering (SENG) has again been ranked among the top engineering schools in the world, according to global rankings surveys conducted by organizations east and west.

In November, Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities 2009 saw HKUST ranked number one among universities in Greater China (Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan) in its list of the World’s Top 100 Universities in Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences. The University has held this position since the field rankings were first published in 2007. In the 2009 results, HKUST also ranked among the top five universities in Asia Pacific. It was placed 36 overall.

Earlier, SENG was once more ranked in the top 30 universities worldwide in Engineering and Information Technology by the 2009 Times Higher Education–QS World University Rankings. In these rankings, HKUST was placed at 26. The top three universities were all US institutions: MIT, UC Berkeley and Stanford respectively.

“SENG’s success is a tribute to our world-class faculty and the endeavors of our students,” said Dean Khaled Ben Letaief. “We are really pleased to see that we consistently rank among the leading universities in the world in engineering, technology and IT. We shall be continuing to work toward even greater impact in the future.”

Rankings for field lists include every institution that has any Nobel Laureates, Fields Medalists and highly cited researchers. Major universities globally with significant numbers of articles indexed by Science Citation Index-Expanded and Social Science Citation Index are also included. More than 1,000 institutions are ranked in each broad subject field.

Institution World Ranking

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 1 Stanford University 2 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 3 University of California, Berkeley 4 Carnegie Mellon University 5 Pennsylvania State University - University Park 10 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne 15 Northwestern University 22 Princeton University 26 The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 36 Harvard University 38 Tsinghua University 44 University of Massachusetts Amherst 50

Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities in Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences 2009

The QS World University Rankings were conceived to present a multi-faceted view of the relative strengths of the world's leading universities. The research yields results on over 600 “in the round” and 300 in each of five broad faculty areas. The overall rankings are compiled based in six distinct indicators including Academic Peer Review, Employer Review, Faculty Student Ratio, Citations per Faculty, International Faculty and International Students.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 1 University of California, Berkeley 2 Stanford University 3 Harvard University 22 Princeton University 23 Cornell University 24 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 25 The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 26 Seoul National University 27 University of Waterloo 27

Times Higher Education–QS World University Rankings in Engineering and IT 2009

Demonstrating the high level of international achievement within the School of Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering research teams won two out of a total of three Best Paper Awards at the 14th International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications (DASFAA) in Australia.

Prof Dik Lun Lee and his PhD student Budi Yuwono received the inaugural DASFAA 10+ Best Paper Award 2009 for their groundbreaking early study on how search engines should be d e ve l o p e d a n d r u n . T h e i r p a p e r, " S e r ve r R a n k i n g fo r Distributed Text Retrieval Systems on the Internet", fir st published in 1997, was selected from more than 320 papers presented over a period of 10 year s (1989-1999) at six DASFAA international conferences.

Prof Lee’s work represented an influential piece of research that was one of the earliest to focus on meta-search engines, according to the selection panel. The paper has continued to make an impact in the years following its publication and has been cited 120 times.

When Prof Lee began his research on search engines in 1994, in the ear ly days of search engine technology, the major players were WebCrawler, InfoSeek and Lycos. Google had yet to emer ge as the dominant force . However, Prof Lee’s far-sighted observations have stood the test of time. He even cautioned about the risks involved in relying on one big search engine for web search work, including its negative impact on privacy, data screening, renewal and customization.

In his view, a large number of collaborative search engines offers a better mode of operation. “This helps to address the issue of privacy. It also gives collaborative search engine operators and content owners the autonomy or ability to track usage and add or remove contents from the search engine any time they want,” said Prof Lee, who joined HKUST in 1994.

The pioneering academic is currently working on research involving a per sonalized search engine which tr ies to understand a user’s viewing habits and ranks results according to the user’s interests.

Prof Lei Chen and his doctorate student Xiang Lian collected t h e DA S FA A B e s t Pa p e r Aw a r d 2 0 0 9 fo r t h e i r p a p e r "Probabilistic Inverse Ranking Queries Over Uncer tain Data". The research attempts to answer inverse ranking queries on imprecise data accurately and efficiently. The paper was selected from a total of 186 submissions.

“An inverse ranking query sets out to evaluate the ranking of an object compared with its peers,” said Prof Chen. “Practical applications include judging the health of a newborn baby from his/her weight and height compared with other babies or helping a credit card company determine the credit limit of a new customer among other customers.” Prof Chen joined the School of Engineering in 2005.

Double Success for CSE Academics at Database Systems Conference

Prof Khaled Ben Letaief

Dean of Engineering

03

The months since September, when I took over the post of Dean of the School of Engineering, have been filled with activity as the School continues to prepare for the immense changes that the switch to a four-year degree in 2012 will bring.

This is a challenge that the School is ready to embrace as an unprecedented oppor tunity to revise our curriculum and methods of teaching in dynamic new ways. Thanks to the foresight and capable management of my predecessor s, HKUST School of Engineering is already among the best in the world, as our rankings story in this issue of In Focus shows. We now seek to add to this achievement.

As I explain in the interview on P10-11, our goal is to become a “beacon of excellence”. The wor ld is changing and we need to be ready to train our students to be solution-finders for local problems and those that trouble the world at large. As engineers, we have a responsibility to find answers and to deliver the technology that can assist in improving lives. We have a responsibility to explain our ideas and to consider all the different aspects of living on which these innovations will touch.

T h e e n v i r o n m e n t , t h e n e e d s o f mega-cities, the divide between rich and poor are huge tasks that will require enormous effor t by a wide range of people from different fields to address. Our students will need to receive an education that can produce the type of engineers that can usefully contribute to such 21st centur y needs through their

a b i l i t y t o h a n d l e a d v a n c e d t e c h n o l o g i e s , w o r k o n multidisciplinary projects, and see the global picture.

We are already on our way. The practical creativity of our students and alumni can be seen in the accolades they regularly receive. Under the guidance of our world-class and award-winning faculty, students are being exposed to new ways of learning and engaging in leading research. Students and academics are also finding different rewards in voluntarily setting their skills to work on behalf of others in China and beyond.

The role of engineers is one that today is often unsung globally, with technological achievements from wireless communication to medical technology and intelligent buildings taken for granted. Yet without engineers to drive and implement technology, little development would take place. As Dean of this front-running School of Engineering, I would like to alter this view. The changes that we will undergo in the next few years will propel forward our quest, giving us an unparalleled chance to become that “beacon” and b r i n g e n g i n e e r i n g b a c k i n t o t h e

spotlight.

Finally, I would like to convey again my hear tfelt congratulation to 2009 graduates. Stay in touch!

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