Awards and Achievements (Research)

Prof. Albert Chan’s Research Team Transferring Knowledge for Society’s Benefits

Our heartfelt thanks go to Prof. Albert Chan’s research team for their passion for casting light on construction workers’ health and safety and seeking practical solutions to these challenges. Again, a special milestone for this incredible team comes as its licensed technology of an early heat stress warning system contributed to the achievement of Smart Works of Smar Tone Moblie Communications Limited. Also, it is evident that bringing together academics and the industry has multiplied the success in benefiting society.   Incorporated with the early heat stress warning system, Smart Works has recently won the 1st Prize in the Category of Construction Safety of the Construction Innovation Award 2019 of the Construction Industry Council (CIC). Incorporating the ‘Heat Stress Artificial Intelligence Engine’ developed by Prof. Chan’s research team, Smart Works integrates technologies with five key smart services, namely Smart Helmet, Smart Health Station, Environment Station, Dump Truck Management and Danger Alert & Access Control to enhance construction workers’ health, safety and operational efficiency.   Organised by CIC on a biennial basis since 2015, the Construction Innovation Award aims to spearhead the development, promotion and implementation of new construction materials, methods, technologies for enhancing the competitiveness of the construction industry. The same research team won the Local Grand Prize of the Inaugural Construction Innovation Award in 2015 for their innovative development of anti‐heat stress uniforms, which have been adopted as a standard work wear for construction workers in all government funded project since 2017.   Have a read of Prof. Chan’s profile: Ir Prof Albert PC CHAN  

OSH Best Project Scholarships for BRE Research Students

What wonderful news! Our research students, Mr. Gong Yue and Mrs. Ford jour Genevieve Ataa were selected as one of the OSH Best Project Scholarship winners and one of the MERIT winners of the Occupational Safety and Health Council, respectively. Inspired by their respective supervisors, Dr JoonOh Seo and Prof. Albert Chan, they put forward new ideas and explored health factors for enhancing construction workers’ well-being. Yue’s project on‘Wearable System for Workers’ Productivity, Safety and Health Monitoring’ and Genevieve Ataa’s  project  on‘Investigating  the  Causes  and  Effects  of  Indicators of  Occupational Psychological Health Conditions among Employees’ reflected their hard work and passions.   Amid great applause, Prof. Chan, Yue and Genevieve Ataa were honoured to receive the awards and heartiest congratulations in the OSH Best Project Scholarship Prize Presentation Ceremony on 15 January 2020.    

Applause for BRE Graduate’s Achievements

Dr.Hao ran XU, under the supervision of Prof. Meng NI, was recently awarded the Best Presentation  Award  at  The  First  International  Conference  on  Energy  and  AI(http://www.energy-ai.org/, 9-11 January 2020 in Tianjin,China). He reported their recent progress in the conference of the hybrid numerical simulation method on solid oxide fuel cells(SOFCs), entitled“Combined multi physics simulation and artificial neural network model for fast and accurate online optimization in SOFC operation”.   In addition, Dr. XU has been awarded the Doctoral Prize Fellowship (10 awardees from over 400   applicants, https://www.lboro.ac.uk/join-us/doctoral-prize-fellowships/)   of Lough borough University UK, and is shortlisted for the HKIS Young Scientist Award 2019 (2shortlisted candidates for the 1 award in Engineering Science,http://www.science.org.hk/),which will be finalized in the end of February 2020.   Dr. XU received his Bachelor’s degree from Zhe jiang University in 2014. Then he came to BRE of HK POLYU for his PhD in September 2014 (under the supervision of Prof. Meng NI). He received his PhD in October 2018. His research focuses on the development of solid oxide fuel cells, a promising electrochemical device for energy conversion among electricity, fuel and heat. Up to now, Dr. XU has published more than 40 papers (15 as first author), with 600+citations.     

PolyU Ranked 20th in Asia by Times Higher Education 2019

Ranked 20th in the subject ‘Architecture / Built Environment’ by QS World University Rankings by Subject 2019

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Ranked 3rd in the ‘Architecture’, 13th in the 'Civil Engineering', 21st in the ‘Urban Planning’ and 85th in the 'Environmental Engineering' by the University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP) 2018-19

Dr Sun Yi Securing PICO Public Policy Research Grant

BRE Award for Outstanding Research Performance 2018/19

BRE Award for Outstanding Achievement in Research Funding 2018/19

Join us in congratulating on Prof. Zayed Tarek’s success in securing the Innovation and Technology Fund!

The winning research project ‘Smart Noise Logger‐based Leak Diagnosis System’ will explore a new approach to interpret noise logger outputs and pin point the leak location without the need for other   technologies,such as correlators or acoustic.   It  is a key step in improving the Hong Kong Water Distribution Network and contributing  to a better understanding of pipe performance. The main users of the proposed research will be academics, contractors,municipal personnel,and other interested stakeholders.   Hong Kong (HK) has 8,605 km of potable and salt water pipes with average age of more than 30years, which need high cost of maintenance. A considerable number of pipe bursts/breaks (148)and detected leakage (9,585) cases was reported in 2016. These statistics show the critical situation of Water Distribution Network (WDN) in HK. The socio‐economic consequences of water pipe breaks/bursts are high and cause considerable damage to society, businesses, and the environment.Although much effort was exerted, such efforts are still not enough to significantly reduce WDN vulnerabilities and negative economic impacts. There is an urgent need, therefore, for smart,reliable and consistent leak diagnosis system. Noise loggers are used in HK for long time with less accuracy due to the drawback of the existing interpretation techniques.