New appointments
The Campus Development and Facilities Office (CDFO) has been reorganised into two units, namely the Campus Development Office (CDO) and Facilities Management Office (FMO), effective from 1 January 2017. Mr Chan Tsz-kin, formerly the Associate Director of CDFO, is the new Director of Campus Development. He will lead the CDO in campus planning and projects, and building services. Mr Landy Hung Tung-ming, also formerly Associate Director of Campus Development and Facilities, is the Director of Facilities Management. He will oversee FMO, taking charge of campus management, safety and environment, teaching and logistical support, campus cleaning and customer services.
Professor Diane Elisabeth Pecorari is the new Head of the Department of English. Professor Pecorari received her Bachelor degree in Political Science and Master degree in Communication from Ohio State University, US, and PhD in English Applied Linguistics from the University of Birmingham, UK. Professor Pecorari assumed duty on 30 December.
IAS Distinguished Lectures
Professor Jacob C. Huang of the Department of Materials and Optoelectronic Science, National Sun Yat-sen University, will deliver an IAS Distinguished Lecture titled “Recent exploration on thin film or porous metallic glasses for MEMS and biomedical applications” on 17 January. In the talk, Professor Huang will present some recent progress on metallic glasses in forms of monolithic or multilayered thin films and biomedical applications.
Professor Enge Wang, Vice-President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, will host another IAS Distinguished Lecture on 20 January. The talk titled “Water Study at Surface and Interface” will include the results of Professor Wang’s study on the unusual structure and dynamics of ice surface at the atomic scale, and the molecular imagining, clustering and proton transfer mechanisms of water on salt.
President’s Lecture Series
Particulate matter is widely thought to be a major air pollutant. Professor Chan Chak-keung, Chair Professor of Atmospheric Environment and Dean of the School of Energy and Environment, will give a talk titled “Particulate Matters (PM) Air Pollution” for the next installment of the President’s Lecture Series: Excellence in Academia. The talk will take place on 25 January and explore some recent findings in PM pollution in Hong Kong.
Institutional Research Office
The new Institutional Research Office (IRO), which came into being on 1 December 2016, merges the Institutional Analysis Group (IAG) and the Knowledge Enterprise and Analysis Unit (KEA). IRO is a single, comprehensive contact point for all institutional data requirements. It will enhance the provision of data required by internal users (management, faculty and administrators) and serve the same role with regard to external requests (e.g. government, media, rankings bodies, among others). The new office is led by Dr Kevin Downing.
MOU with Yangzhou Government
CityU and the Yangzhou municipal government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on 28 November to strengthen collaboration. Under the MOU, which is valid for three years, the local government will continue to support the Yangzhou Study Tour and arrange internships for students each summer at Yangzhou enterprises.
Kudos
Professor Ron Chen Guanrong, Chair Professor of the Department of Electronic Engineering, has won the Scientific and Technological Award 2016 - First Class (Natural Science) by Chinese Institute of Command and Control (CICC) with a team from Southeast University in China. The winning project is titled “Control and Optimization of Networked Multi-Agent Systems: Theory and Applications”. One of the scholars from Southeast University, Professor Yu Wenwu, graduated with a PhD from CityU in 2010. His supervisor was Professor Chen.
Professor Wang Jun, Chair Professor from the Department of Computer Science, won the 6th Wu Wenjun Artificial Intelligence Science and Technology Award for his project “Studies on fundamental neurodynamic optimization theory for advancement of artificial intelligence science”. The award, presented by the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence, aims to recognise organisations or individuals who have made outstanding contributions to academic studies in artificial intelligence.
Richard Li Chen, a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science, together with his supervisor Professor Horace Ip Ho-shing and other authors received the Best Short Paper Award in the 15th International Conference on Web-based Learning (ICWL2016) in Rome, Italy from 26 to 29 October 2016. Among the authors are academic staff from the Department of Chinese and History, and alumni from the School of Creative Media. The co-authored paper was titled “Delivering Immersive Learning Experience of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)”.
Lai Chun-tak, an Electronic Communication Engineering graduate in 2016 and now a PhD student in the Department of Electronic Engineering won the Merit Prize of HKEIA Innovation & Technology Project Competition Award 2016. His winning project, supervised by Professor Henry Chung Shu-hung, was titled “Smart Charger”.