Awards and Achievements (Research)

BRE PhD graduate awarded in Green Talents Competition 2022 (Dr Timothy Olawumi)

A PhD graduate of the Department of Building and Real Estate (BRE) in 2020 is honoured as one of the 25 awardees from 18 different countries in the Green Talents Competition 2022 – International Forum for High Potentials in Sustainable Development 2022, which is an annual event hosted by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in recognition of outstanding young scientists who are active in the field of sustainable development. Under the guidance of his Chief Supervisor, Dr Daniel W.M. CHAN, Associate Professor and Associate Head (Teaching) from BRE, Dr Timothy Oluwatosin OLAWUMI has been devoting his energies to develop a BIM-enabled and cloud-based sustainability assessment system for buildings in Sub-Saharan Africa based in Nigeria during his PhD study. The award serves as a chance for Dr Olawumi to connect with global young talents and Germany‘s leading scientific experts for further exchange of creative green ideas to build a more sustainable world (URL: https://www.greentalents.de/awardees-2022.php). Source: https://www.greentalents.de/awardees2022_timothy-olawumi.php

PolyU is ranked No.1 globally in Research.com

PolyU BRE is pleased to announce that PolyU’s with 16 scholars is ranked World No. 1 in Business and Management on Research.com. Four BRE scholars, Prof. Albert Chan, Prof. Heng Li, Prof. Geoffrey Shen, Chair Professors, and Prof. Edwin Chan, Adjunct Professor, with their long-standing dedication, are included in the list: https://bit.ly/3HRfJeD.  Please join us to congratulate our scholars for their remarkable research endeavours and achievements.   The ranking of universities in Research.com is based on a detailed examination of more than 5,972 Business Management researchers’ profiles in Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Graph from more than 507 institutions and affiliations. With the highest productivity and citation impact of publications of scientists, PolyU, with its 3,085 publications, is ranked the Top of Business Management Universities on 6 December 2021. More details can be found: https://bit.ly/34D5X1q   National World Scholar H-index Citations Publications 2 46 Prof. Albert Chan 79 22,363 332 4 60 Prof. Heng Li 76 18,077 235 39 960 Prof. Geoffrey Shen 34 6,731 60 49 1,291 Prof. Edwin Chan 30 5,327 104  

Congratulations to Prof. Li Heng, Prof. Ni Meng and Prof. Zayed Tarek on receiving the BRE Award for Outstanding Research Performance 2020/21

BRE PhD Graduate Winning the BIM Africa Innovation Awards 2021 (Category: Research Excellence Award)

In the recently concluded BIM Africa Innovation Awards 2021 organized by BIM Africa, Dr Timothy OLAWUMI – a PhD graduate of the Department of Building and Real Estate (BRE) of PolyU in 2020 received the prestigious Research Excellence Award (out of the 298 nominations received by BIM Africa). The BIM Africa Innovation Awards 2021 seeks to recognize the talents and efforts of leading industry professionals and organizations in the construction sector going above and beyond to deploy innovative solutions towards Africa’s Development. There are nine award categories in total (https://awards.bimafrica.org/nomination.html) which is based on nominations of candidates for any of the award category while nine appointed award judges make the final award assessment. Timothy received his award plaque and certificate during the online award presentation ceremony on Tuesday, 2 November 2021. Dr Olawumi is grateful to have been nominated for the award by a number of people, including Cr Dr Daniel W.M. CHAN, Associate Professor and Associate Head (Teaching) of BRE, who effectively supervised his PhD research study which Timothy completed in August 2020. He also appreciated the award judges for the recognition that he received for his research work. Dr Olawumi is currently an Assistant Professor / Lecturer of Construction and Surveying, School of Engineering and the Built Environment, Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland, United Kingdom. The BIM Africa Research Excellence Award is awarded to an “exceptional Individual of African descent in Academia (or a Research Team/Project) that have developed and completed research works involving the deployment of innovative digital technologies and processes towards driving the building and infrastructure Industry’s transformation”.   Award announcement Link: https://bimafrica.org/news/awards-2021

BRE PhD Student Winning the AIB(HK) Professional Excellence in Building Awards 2021

In the Professional Excellence in Building Awards 2021 organized by the Australian Institute of Building (Hong Kong Chapter) (AIB-HK), one full-time PhD research student of the Department of Building and Real Estate (BRE) of PolyU (Mr Abdullahi Saka from Nigeria) won the Certificate of Merit award based on his entry entitled “Development of a Hybrid Intelligent and Dynamic System for Adoption and Implementation of Building Information Modelling (BIM) in Construction Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Developing Countries” submitted to the category (B3 - Student Achievement). He is being currently supervised by Dr Daniel W.M. Chan, Associate Professor and Associate Head (Teaching) of BRE. He received his award certificate at the Award Presentation Ceremony held on Saturday, 17 July 2021 afternoon at the Conrad Hong Kong Hotel, Admiralty, Hong Kong. The nomination requirements of the award category (B3 - Student Achievement) are open to any undergraduate or postgraduate students studying construction, civil, building, mechanical, architectural, E&M engineering or surveying in universities and colleges (both full-time mode and part-time mode).

BRE Scholar and Students Receiving the ‘Built Environment Project and Asset Management Highly Commended Paper Award’ in the 9th World Construction Symposium 2021

Please join us in congratulating Ms Anushika Ekanayake (PhD student of BRE), Prof. Geoffrey Shen (Chair Professor of BRE), Prof. Mohan Kumaraswamy (Honorary Professor of the University of Hong Kong) and Dr Jin Xue (Post-Doctoral Fellow of BRE) on receiving the ‘Built Environment Project and Asset Management Highly Commended Paper Award’ in the 9th World Construction Symposium 2021! Entitled ‘Dynamic Supply Chain Capability Analysis of Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Construction: A Topic Modeling Approach’, the heart of the winning paper is to employ the topic over time modeling as a novel text mining method to dynamically analyze the supply chain capabilities associated with the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Construction by unveiling academia, an effective and novel mechanism to extract dynamic empirical clues from a large unstructured set of documents in construction supply chain capability analysis research. A big clap for the team’s endeavour!

Prof. Meng Ni co-authored a research article in Nature on fuel cells

In collaboration with Nanjing Tech University (China) and Colorado School of Mines (USA), Prof. Meng Ni, a Professor and Associate Head (Research) of BRE, co-authored a research article entitled “Thermal-expansion offset for high-performance fuel cell cathodes” in Nature.   The first author, Dr Yuan Zhang, worked in Prof. Meng Ni’s lab for 1 year where she conducted part of the experimental research reported in this Nature paper. The second author, Dr Bin Chen (now an Assistant Professor at Shenzhen University, China), received his PhD in 2018 from BRE under supervision of Prof. Meng Ni. The corresponding authors are Prof. Zongping Shao and Prof. Wei Zhou, who are supervisors of Dr. Yuan Zhang and are both from Nanjing Tech University.   High temperature solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) have the potential to replace conventional thermal power plants for energy conversion. One challenge for SOFC commercialization is thermo-mechanical instability due to mismatch in thermal expansion behaviour between different fuel cell components, which can cause cell performance degradation or even failure. In this research article, a novel electrode development strategy is proposed by compositing a cobalt-based perovskite with high electrochemical activity and large thermal expansion coefficient with a negative thermal expansion material. A new interface is formed between the two materials. A-site deficiencies in the perovskite are also observed. As a result, the composite electrode shows both high electrochemical activity and excellent thermos-mechanical stability. This research provides a new strategy for the development of high performance and durable solid oxide fuel cells for efficient and clean power generation.   The details of this Nature article can be found at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03264-1   Prof. Meng NI is a Professor and Associate Head (Research) of BRE. He is a Humboldt Fellow (Germany). His research focuses on high temperature fuel cells, rechargeable metal-air batteries, flow batteries, and novel electrochemical cells for low-grade heat harvesting, and energy materials. He is serving as a Senior Editor for Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/sustainable-energy-technologies-and-assessments (Elsevier) and a former Associate Editor for Science Bulletin (Elsevier). He is an Associate Editor for International Journal of Green Energy: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ljge20/current (Taylor & Francis) and International Journal of Energy Research: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1099114x (Wiley). He is one of the founding editors of Energy and AI: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy-and-ai/ (Elsevier).   For more details about Prof. Ni, please visit: https://www.polyu.edu.hk/bre/people/academic-staff/prof-meng-ni/

Ranked 18th in the subject ‘Architecture / Built Environment’ by QS World University Rankings by Subject 2021

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Ranked 21st in the subject ‘Engineering - Civil & Structural’ by QS World University Rankings by Subject 2021

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Dr Kingsford Owusu Awarded ‘Thesis Awards for Postgraduate Students of The Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors’