Awards and Achievements (Research)

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

BRE Scholars Ranked Among Top 2% of Scientists In The World

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’

Prof. Meng Ni winning RGC CRF project

Huge congratulations to Prof. Meng Ni,Professor and Associate Head (Research) of BRE! Prof.Ni will  receive  a  grant  of  HK$4.2  Million  from Research  Grant Council(RGC) Collaborative  Research  Fund(CRF)  for  his project “Durable  and  high-performance zinc-air  flow  batteries  for  energy  storage”.This  is  the first  RGC  large-scale  research grant received by BRE staff as a project coordinator.    Renewable solar and wind power are intermittent and site specific.  Development of high performance and durable rechargeable batteries are essential for successful application of renewable power.  Compared with other types of batteries, zin-air batteries have high energy density,  cheap  and  safe.    To  solve  problems  of  Zn  dendrite  formation  and  Znelectrode passivation, Zn-air flow batteries will be developed.  To reduce the energy loss at the air electrode, novel perovskite catalyst will be explored.This project will develop high  performance  and  durable  Zn-air  flow  batteries  for  grid  scale  energy  storage  to facilitate the application of renewable solar and wind power.    Prof.Ni will conduct this project in collaboration  with Prof. Dennis Leung from The University  of  Hong  Kong  (HKU)  andProf.  Tian shou Zhao from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Prof.K.Y. Chan from HKU and Prof. Peng Tan from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) will serve as collaborator of this project.   Prof. Meng Ni is currently a Professor and Associate Head (Research) of Department of Building and Real Estate.He is a Humboldt Fellow (Germany). His research focuses on high  temperature  fuel  cells,  rechargeable  metal-air  batteries,  flow  batteries,  novelelectro chemical cells for low-grade heat harvesting, and energy materials.   He is serving as a Senior Edito rfor 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).  Recently, he was invited to be 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 also one of the founding editors of Energy and     AI: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy-and-ai/(Elsevier).