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Call for Nominations: Outstanding Alumni Award of PolyU Department of Electrical Engineering 2022

The year 2022 marks the 85th Anniversary of PolyU. New features are introduced to the Outstanding PolyU Alumni Award (OPAA) including adding awards at department and faculty levels, to recognise our distinguished alumni’s diverse accomplishments and contributions. The Outstanding Alumni Award of PolyU Department aims to give public recognition to outstanding graduates of a PolyU academic department for their professional achievements and significant contributions to the community and their alma mater. Award Categories and Selection Criteria The OPAA will be conducted at three levels: Department level, Faculty/ School level and University level. The recipients of the Department Award will be nominated to the Faculty Award. All Faculty/ School awardees will be considered for the University Award. There are four achievement categories, namely “Professional Achievement”, “Entrepreneurial Achievement”, “Scholarly Achievement” and “Community Service Achievement”. Selection is based on the nominee’s accomplishments in his/ her personal achievements in the field, contributions to the community, and support and contributions to PolyU. Special recognition to young alumni awardees in the award category is added. A candidate who is aged under 40 by the end of the award year can be considered under the Outstanding PolyU Young Alumni stream. Eligibility The nominated candidate must be a bona fide graduate who has successfully completed the full-time or part-time programme offered by PolyU (or its forerunners: Hong Kong Government Trade School, Hong Kong Technical College, Hong Kong Polytechnic; and its constituent units: School of Professional Education & Executive Development and Hong Kong Community College) which led to academic award accredited by the respective Institution. The proposer can be a PolyU graduate, Honorary Graduate, University Fellow, PolyU staff, current PolyU Council and Court member and current Advisory Committee member. There is no limit to the number of nominations to be submitted by each proposer. However, the proposer cannot be the candidate himself/ herself or a direct relative of the candidate. Nomination and Selection Schedule The Department of Electrical Engineering (EE) is now inviting nominations for the Outstanding Alumni Award of PolyU Department of Electrical Engineering 2022. Please download the Nomination Form and return it to eenotice@polyu.edu.hk with all required supplementary documents on or before 31 October 2021. Selection for the Department Award will be conducted by end of 2021. Panel of Judges A panel of judges, comprising both internal and external members, will be formed to examine the nominations and assess candidates’ qualifications and performance for the awards.

World’s first ammonia-powered fuel-cell EV– Achievements by Professor Eric Cheng

Prof. Eric Cheng Ka-wai and his research team developed the world’s first ammonia-powered fuel-cell EV in just three months. The ammonia inside the fuel-cell system will be transformed into hydrogen to generate power. This new development is through the support from industry partners. The research team plans to develop an ammonia-powered fuel-cell mini-bus by October 2022 and hopes to collaborate with local mini-bus companies to promote zero-emission electric mini-buses.

Congratulations! Best Paper Award by IEEE IAS I&CPS Asia 2021

Professor Xu Zhao and his research team obtained the Best Paper Award, 2021 IEEE IAS Industrial and Commercial Power System Asia Conference (IEEE IAS I&CPS Asia 2021), Chengdu, China. The paper: Probabilistic Power Flow of Distribution System based on a Graph-Aware Deep Learning Network.

TV Interview on Decoding the GBA《大灣區解碼》

Dr Ivan Ho and his research group were featured in the TVB programme, Decoding the GBA《大灣區解碼》, which was broadcasted on 1 July 2021. In the interview, Dr Ho discussed how the new policy of allowing cross-boundary remittance of the Mainland research funding would benefit the academic research in Hong Kong. Dr Ho also shared some examples including his research and the development on digital twin for connected autonomous vehicles, and indoor positioning and robot tracking services with the audience.

Research Paper published in the Nature Photonics journal

A research team led by Prof. Gang Li published a paper “Stable and low-photovoltage-loss perovskite solar cells by multifunctional passivation” in the Nature Photonics journal in July 2021. Nature Photonics is a monthly journal dedicated to publish top-quality and peer-reviewed research in all areas of light generation, manipulation and detection. The journal covers research related to optoelectronics, laser science, imaging, communications and other aspects of photonics. It is regarded as a top-ranking journal in the field of photonics.  Metal halide perovskite solar cells have demonstrated a high power conversion efficiency (PCE), and further enhancement of the PCE requires a reduction of the bandgap-voltage offset (WOC) and the non-radiative recombination photovoltage loss (ΔVOC,nr). In this paper, the research team reported an effective approach for reducing the photovoltage loss through the simultaneous passivation of internal bulk defects and dimensionally graded two-dimensional perovskite interface defects. Through this dimensionally graded perovskite formation approach, an open-circuit voltage (VOC) of 1.24 V was obtained with a champion PCE of 21.54% in a 1.63 eV perovskite system (maximum VOC = 1.25 V, WOC = 0.38 V and ΔVOC,nr = 0.10 V); the team further decreased the WOC to 0.326 V in a 1.53 eV perovskite system with a VOC of 1.21 V and a PCE of 23.78% (certified 23.09%). This approach is equally effective in achieving a low WOC (ΔVOC,nr) in 1.56 eV and 1.73 eV perovskite solar cell systems, and further leads to the substantially improved operational stability of perovskite solar cells. The paper is available at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-021-00829-4.

Highly sensitive, microscopic optical fibre sensors with pioneering biomedical monitoring capability

The research team led by Professor Hwa-yaw Tam, Chair Professor of Photonics and Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering at PolyU, developed the novel fibre optic microsensors that are biocompatible, supple and extremely sensitive to very small pressure changes inside the human body.  His team also made a critical breakthrough by basing their novel fibre optic sensors on an advanced plastic material, ZEONEX, that solves the problems of glass and traditional plastic. For more details, please click HERE.

2020 China’s Top Ten Optical Breakthroughs

Professor W Jin and his research team has worked on the “gas sensing research” which is honoured as “2020 China’s Top Ten Optical Breakthroughs” by China Laser Press.   In the applied research category, Professor Jin Wei, Chair Professor of Photonic Instrumentation, and his team developed a novel method of gas sensing called the Mode-phase-difference Photothermal Spectroscopy. The method was hailed as “a landmark technique in fibre-optic gas sensing” by a reviewer in Nature Communications, where the research results were published.  The innovation significantly outperforms state-of-the-art electrochemical and semiconductor gas sensors, and enables multi-component gas detection with a single sensing element. It paves the way for ultra-precision gas sensing for applications such as harmful gas detection in a space station and high voltage transformer condition monitoring.     

The EIE Newsletter (2020/21 Semester 2 Issue) is available now

Second Runner-up in the Postgraduate Paper Contest

The IEEE Macau Industrial Electronics Society (IES) Chapter organized the Postgraduate Paper Contest 2020 for the Hong Kong and Macau postgraduate students to promote the advanced power and electronics technologies for smart city. Our PhD student, Liu Ying, won the Second Runner-up in this contest with the research paper “A Study on the Safety of Inductive Power Transfer System for Kitchen Appliances”. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the safety of human body in the electromagnetic field generated by the inductive power transfer (IPT) system, which is designed for kitchen appliances. Comparisons of the basic and reference limit values of various safety standards are investigated through theoretical circuit analysis and extensive simulation studies. Simulation models of human body together with an IPT system for kitchen appliances are established to reveal the effect of electromagnetic field on the human body. Corresponding experiments are carried out through establishing a prototype of designed IPT system and simulating the human standing position. The measured results are consistent with the theoretical results.

Two teams of EIE postgraduate students and research staff from the Photonic Systems and Devices Focus Area attained the First and Second Prizes in the innovation category of the 7th Hong Kong University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition.

The 7th Hong Kong University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition was organized by the Hong Kong New Generation Cultural Association between April and May 2021. The competition was co-organized by the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) and funded by the Innovation and Technology Commission (ITC). It aims to develop science and innovation education, and gather the most talented innovators and entrepreneurs from all tertiary institutions in Hong Kong. Two teams of EIE postgraduate students and research staff from the Photonic Systems and Devices Focus Areaattained the following prizes in the innovation category of this competition! Award Project Student / Staff First Prize (Innovation - Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering category) High Performance Solution-Processed Perovskite Solar Cell Towards Sustainable Development ZHANG Heng Kai (PhD student) REN Zhiwei (Postdoctoral Fellow) LIU Kuan (Postdoctoral Fellow) Second Prize (Innovation – Information Technology category) Intelligent Driver Health Assessment System Based on the Optical Fiber Interferometer YU Jianxun (MSc in EIE student) CHEN Shuyang (PhD Student) QU Jiaqi (PhD Student) Solar energy, the most generous gift from the nature, can satisfy all the need for industry production and people’s daily life. Perovskite solar cell is the most promising photovoltaic technology to be the game changer of energy field for its low fabrication cost, high power conversion efficiency, tunable bandgaps and facile manufacture process. As epitaxial growth gives the highest-quality crystalline semiconductor thin films for optoelectronic devices, the project “High Performance Solution-Processed Perovskite Solar Cell Towards Sustainable Development” introduced a brand-new approach for achieving high quality and high efficiency perovskite solar cell.  While another winning project “Intelligent Driver Health Assessment System Based on the Optical Fiber Interferometer” developed an assessment system to monitor the drivers’ health. The system is implemented in the sensing part, which is a smart cushion embedded by the optical fiber interferometer to collect human’s ballistocardiograph (BCG) signal. The raw data collected will be transmitted to the cloud server by the 4G communication module for analysis. It achieves contactless health condition assessment and non-invasive vital signs monitoring for drivers to avoid traffic safety hazards caused by the drivers in poor health condition.