ENTRY

May 2025 Entry

STUDY MODE
Full-time, Part-time
Application Deadline
PhD & MPhil
31-Jan-2025
About Programme
How to Apply
Introduction

The Department of Building Environment and Energy Engineering (BEEE), originally named Building Services Engineering (BSE), was officially established in December 1981, and has become one of the largest BEEE departments worldwide. As a leading provider of trained professionals in building services for the unique environment of Hong Kong, research in BEEE focuses on enhancing the quality of the environment, energy efficiency, the use of renewable energy, and the safety and resilience of buildings to effectively address the contemporary concerns and future challenges of urban environments. Its core mission is to devise and improve engineering systems to promote the health and well-being of building occupants by providing a sanctuary from the elements and the extremes of temperature, noise, light, toxins and pathogens at the lowest cost of energy and resources. It offers a range of undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes serving the needs of the local industry.

 

BEEE research is highly recognized among the most prestigious universities worldwide, being ranked 15 in both Architecture & Built Environment and Engineering (Civil and Structural Engineering) by the latest 2022 QS World University Rankings. The expertise of BEEE academic staff spans a wide range of disciplines, including the aspects of sustainability; building energy, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems; fire and safety engineering; electrical technology; public health; indoor environmental engineering; architectural engineering; computer-aided design and facilities management.

 

In recent years, the Department has made a remarkable achievement in securing highly competitive and prestigious multi-year, multimillion-dollar grants, including two from the Theme-based Research Scheme, one from the Research Impact Fund and three from the Collaborative Research Fund.

Research Area

Building and Environment

  • Advanced lighting systems

  • Building acoustics, noise and vibration control

  • Building performance simulation and rating methods

  • CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) and air-flows inside and around buildings

  • Designs for indoor environmental quality

  • Energy efficient building and advanced system technologies: radiant cooling, thermal energy storage and functional materials

  • Environmental economics and behaviour

  • Human and environment interaction

  • Indoor air pollutant dynamics

  • Indoor air quality

  • Indoor environment modelling and control

  • Lighting quality

  • Pollutant dispersion in buildings and urban environment

  • Urban microclimate

  • Ventilation for health and infectious disease control

  • Wind and thermal comfort

SupervisorTelEmail 
Prof. J.L. Niu2766 7781jian-lei.niu@polyu.edu.hk 
Prof. Y.H. Chao2766 4673christopher.chao@polyu.edu.hk 
Prof. Q.Y. Chen3400 3038qingyan.chen@polyu.edu.hk 
Prof. C.M. Mak2766 5856cheuk-ming.mak@polyu.edu.hk 
Prof M.C. Wei3400 3606minchen.wei@polyu.edu.hk 
Dr C.K. Chau2766 7780chi-kwan.chau@polyu.edu.hk 
Dr K.C. Chan2766 4610oscar-kc.chan@polyu.edu.hk 
Dr J. Feng2766 7801jieee.feng@polyu.edu.hk 
Dr S.C. Fu2766 4858schung.fu@polyu.edu.hk 
Dr Z.Y. Li2766 7957zhiyuankyle.li@polyu.edu.hk 
Dr Y.X. Xie 2766 4652yong-xin.xie@polyu.edu.hk 
Dr R.Y. You3400 8284ruoyu.you@polyu.edu.hk 
Dr Y.C. Yu2766 5834yichen.yu@polyu.edu.hk 
 

Building Energy

  • Zero/low energy building technologies for carbon-neutral communities
  • Big data analytics on building energy systems
  • Building demand-response and energy-flexible buildings
  • Building energy system design/control optimisation and diagnosis
  • Advanced technologies for complex air-conditioning systems (data center, high-tech cleanroom, district cooling, etc.)
  • Renewable energy technologies and applications in buildings: solar energy, wind energy and ground source heat pump technologies
  • Next-generation technologies for smart buildings
SupervisorTelEmail
Prof. S.W. Wang2766 5858shengwei.wang@polyu.edu.hk
Prof. Jerry J.Y. Yan3400 8246j-jerry.yan@polyu.edu.hk
Prof. L. Lu3400 3596vivien.lu@polyu.edu.hk
Prof. K.W. Mui2766 5835horace.mui@polyu.edu.hk
Prof. F. Xiao2766 4194linda.xiao@polyu.edu.hk
Prof. H.X. Yang2766 5863hong-xing.yang@polyu.edu.hk
Dr S.L. Cao2766 5837sunliang.cao@polyu.edu.hk
Dr L.T. Wong2766 7783ling-tim.wong@polyu.edu.hk
Dr H.X. Li2766 5854hangxin.li@polyu.edu.hk
Dr Y. Sahni2766 5852yuvraj-comp.sahni@polyu.edu.hk
Dr K. Shan3400 8283kui.shan@polyu.edu.hk
Dr Q.L. Wang2766 4726 qiliang.wang@polyu.edu.hk

Building Safety and Resilience

  • AI applications in fire safety engineering

  • Aircraft and spacecraft fire safety

  • Atrium fires

  • Computational fire modelling

  • Electrical fires

  • Electrical safety

  • Facade fire in supertall buildings

  • Fire ecology

  • Fire protection systems

  • Fire safety of green and sustainable architectural features

  • Fire safety in Wildland-Urban Interface

  • Fires in transport infrastructure (tunnels, bridges etc.)

  • Large scale structural and fire testing

  • Safety from lightning hazard

  • Smart firefighting

  • Sprinkler and water mist systems research

  • Structural analysis under fire

  • Structures and materials in fire

  • Subway station, long tunnels and public transport terminals

  • Thermal safety of new energy technologies

  • Wildfire dynamics and extreme fire behaviours

SupervisorTelEmail
Prof. A. Usmani2766 5842asif.usmani@polyu.edu.hk 
Dr X.Y. Huang3400 8286xy.huang@polyu.edu.hk 
Dr L.M. Jiang2766 5844liming.jiang@polyu.edu.hk 
Dr A. D. A. Ahmad3400 3890daud-ali-ahmad.abdoh@polyu.edu.hk
Dr J.H. Shi2766 7964jihao.shi@polyu.edu.hk
Dr C.Y. Yuen3400 8289anthony-cy.yuen@polyu.edu.hk
Dr Y.X. Zhang2766 7962yx.zhang@polyu.edu.hk

Electrical Services

  • Electrical power quality

  • Electrical safety

  • Electromagnetic modelling and shielding

  • Lightning protection and detection

SupervisorTelEmail
Prof. M.L. Chen2766 4549mingli.chen@polyu.edu.hk
Prof. Y.P. Du2766 7784ya-ping.du@polyu.edu.hk
Dr Y.X. Ding2766 4728yuxuanz.ding@polyu.edu.hk
Dr X.G. Zhao2766 6642xiangen.zhao@polyu.edu.hk

Facility Management

  • Building information modelling (BIM) for FM

  • Commissioning and reliability of facilities

  • Energy management and carbon footprint analysis

  • Facility operation and maintenance

  • Facility planning and design

  • Facility support services management

  • FM economics and finance

  • Information and communication technologies for FM

  • Internet of things (IoT) for FM

  • Legal and environmental issues in FM

  • Outsourcing and contracts

  • Performance assessment and benchmarking

  • Strategic asset management

  • Workplace ecology and management

SupervisorTelEmail
Prof. Joseph H.K. Lai2766 4697joseph.lai@polyu.edu.hk
Dr Cynthia H.Y. Hou2766 5836cynthia.hou@polyu.edu.hk
Research Facilities

A full range of facilities and equipment are available in the Department of Building Environment and Energy Engineering (BEEE) to support teaching, research and consultancy work. The specialist facilities include the following.

 

Acoustics Laboratory

This lab is equipped with all essential and advanced equipment for the study and measurement of sound and vibration (both indoor and outdoor). There is an acoustics testing chamber that conforms to ISO/BS/ASTM standards for testing sound transmission loss, sound absorption and machine sound power.

 

Advanced Air-conditioning and Energy Storage Technology Laboratory

This laboratory consists of two experimental test rigs for carrying out both scientific and applied research on the advanced liquid desiccant dehumidification system and the novel three-phase absorption thermal energy storage system. The two test rigs are equipped with advanced data acquisition system, which can measure and collect a large number of physical and chemical properties for characterizing and modeling of the two types of system. The test rigs can also facilitate the development and test of the control methods/strategies.

 

Advanced Cooling System Laboratory

The laboratory aims to provide a platform for students to conduct scientific research, experiments and measurement on advanced cooling technologies. The facilities can be used to evaluate surface energy and thermal behaviour of advanced building envelopes and to investigate advanced solar PV glazing technologies.

 

Advanced Thermal and Environmental Engineering Laboratory

The laboratory is equipped with ductless fume hood and clean booth to conduct experiments that involve the process sensitive to chemical and requiring extreme cleanliness, for fabricating and characterizing devices and materials related to indoor environmental quality. A set of aerosol generation and characterization equipment, a microscope imaging system as well as a wind tunnel with high-speed camera allow researchers to analyse the relevant structure and fluid flow.

 

Building Energy and Automation Research Laboratory

The Building Energy and Automation Research Laboratory facilitates research on building energy efficiency and the use of modern IT/computing technologies to improve building energy performance. It has developed a building system online performance simulation platform and a building automation control and diagnosis strategy online test platform, in addition to various tools for building performance diagnosis and optimisation. Developing and managing a centralised energy monitoring and assessment platform to monitor and control the energy performance of PolyU’s campus buildings, the lab also helps many local developers and building owners to develop optimal and energy-efficient control strategies and optimised control instrumentation solutions to improve the energy efficiency of their buildings.

 

Built Environment Simulation Laboratory

The Built Environment Simulation Laboratory is designed for teaching and research purposes. The Laboratory is equipped with the state-of-the-art facilities for cross-platform game engine development of building simulation and implementation in immersive virtual reality (IVR), augmented reality (AR) as well as mixed reality (MR). High dynamic range (HDR) panoramic cameras and LiDAR scanners are provided for generating 3D visualization and other VR applications in environmental design. In addition, high-resolution VR retina displays and other multi-media devices are availabe for experiments and CGI projects.

 

Carbon Neutral Building Laboratory

The laboratory aims to provide a research platform for students to conduct experiments and measurement on thermally-regulated constructed surfaces. The facilities can be used to evaluate the optical properties of glazing technologies and constructed surfaces.

 

Colour and Illumination Laboratory

Facilities in the lab cover a wide range of testing, measurement, and calibration equipment and protocols for various imaging systems, including cameras, displays, virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality systems. In addition, various tunable lighting equipment can be used to carry out experiments to better understand how the human beings respond to light and color stimuli under different viewing conditions. These can be used to develop metrics for different imaging systems and also to further our understanding about the human visual system.

 

Design and Development Centre

Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and drafting form an important part of the Department’s teaching programmes. The facilities in our Design and Development Centres include the latest Pentium computers and various plotting and printing facilities linked by a LAN. Peripherals include scanners, digitisers, large plotters and various printing facilities. It also provides computing facilities for our BEEE students.

 

Electrical Services Laboratory

Facilities in the electrical services lab are suitable for testing and commissioning electrical installations, testing electrical equipment, conducting power quality analyses (harmonics, transients, etc.) and electro-magnetic field measurements and lightning detecting and monitoring systems, among others.

 

Fire Engineering Laboratory

There are two fire chambers that can conduct large-scale burning tests up to 1 MW and are well-equipped with instruments to measure temperature, smoke motion, fire heat release rate, material flammability and fire emission toxicity. Various fire protection systems are installed to evaluate fire suppression performances. Wind tunnels are available for evaluating the thermal sensitivities of sprinkler heads and fire detectors. The newly developed Digital Twin system can monitor the real-time fire scene and forecast future fire development. 

 

HVACR Laboratory

Air conditioning systems provide comfortable interior thermal environments for building occupants. The process involves the removal of heat and humidity by different types of air handling equipment. Fans are used to distribute the conditioned air to various interior zones of a building through air ducts. In the HVAC lab, students can study the operating characteristics of fans and the air-flow disturbance along an air duct using the Fan Test Rig and the Air Duct and Damper Test Rig. Other experimental equipment includes a Refrigeration Laboratory Unit, a Bench Top Cooling Tower and an Air Conditioning Laboratory Unit.

 

Indoor Air Quality (Bioaerosal) Laboratory

The Laboratory at Biological Safety Level 2 (BSL-2) is equipped with a Class II biological safety cabinet, as stated in the “Guidelines on Biosafety in the Clinical Laboratory” issued by the Department of Health (2005). The lab is also equipped with a wide range of bioaerosol sampling facilities for laboratory and field studies, including single stage impactors, Anderson samplers, biotest RCS plus, an incubator and an autoclave.

 

Indoor Environmental Quality Laboratory

Most of the test rigs in this lab are portable, comprising various gas analysers, temperature, humidity and air flow sensors for measurements in occupied spaces, on air-side systems, etc. The manikin is an important piece of equipment for investigating thermal comfort and indoor air quality. Integrated analysis of the data in different areas such as thermal comfort, indoor air quality and subjective human responses can be carried out.

 

​Intelligent Building Laboratory

The Intelligent Building (IB) Laboratory facilities include a comprehensive IB system, a full set of building automation systems, test rigs for IoT-enabled building automation, VR and AI-enable building energy facility management, grid-interactive building technology and energy-flexible building technologies as well as a variety of measurement instruments for building energy monitoring. The IB lab provides test facilities for teaching and learning as well as for R&D on intelligent building technologies, the development of advanced building system control, energy management, diagnosis strategies and communication software.

 

Lighting Laboratory

The Lighting Lab’s goniophotometer, integrating sphere and spectroradiometer help to characterise various photometric (e.g., luminous flux, luminous intensity distribution) and colourimetric (e.g., spectral power distribution, correlated colour temperature, chromaticity coordinates, CIE Colour Rendering Index, IES TM-30-15, etc.) quantities for light sources and luminaires. The High Dynamic Range Imaging System allows us to perform luminance and glare analyses for exterior and interior luminous environmental assessments. In addition, the 14-channel spectrally tunable LED lighting system, spectroradiometer, spectrophotometer and standard viewing booth allow us to simulate different lighting conditions and to perform colour characterisation using different materials and surface colours.

 

Lightning Physics and Protection Laboratory

This lab facilitates research on the formation, detection of and protection from lightning. It includes various instruments specially designed for lightning research, such as slow and fast antennae and a magnetic loop antenna for measuring lightning-caused electric fields, a lightning location system, high-speed camera, broadband interferometer system and lightning current measuring system. It also includes various instruments for general use, such as high-speed oscilloscopes and data recorders. Due to the nature of lightning, these instruments are usually installed in fields outside the lab for experiments during the summer. The lab also has various sets of software for modelling lightning processes.

 

Low-carbon Building Technology Laboratory

The Low-carbon Building Technology Laboratory consists of a stainless-steel cladded environmental chamber the size of a typical office, and a stand-alone air-conditioning system. The chamber also has following provisions:

a) two types of air distribution methods;

b) Radiant ceiling panels

c) Thermal manikins, heat and moisture sources

The lab accommodates a variety of experimental studies.

 

Multi-Function Chamber Laboratory

The Multi-Function Chamber Laboratory is equipped with a main heating and cooling plant comprising a chiller, a boiler, hot and chilled water pumps, an air handling plant and a main supervisory control and data acquisition centre. The temperature, relative humidity and air-flow within the chamber can be precisely controlled over a wide range of set-point conditions for various precision measurements.

 

Piped Services Laboratory

This lab provides facilities for testing and commissioning building water supply and drainage systems. Bench-scale test rigs are set up to assess the performance and efficiency of various system components.

 

Renewable Energy Laboratory

Established in August 2014, the lab enables fundamental and applied research on solar energy materials and green building materials in collaboration with industry and leading academic institutions, providing advanced and innovative technological solutions for the generation of renewable energy and a sustainable built environment.

 

RISE Academic Studio

RISE Academic Studio is a functional space well equipped with video and audio facilities to support face-to-face and online academic exchanges and functions of different natures and at different levels.

 

Solar Simulation Laboratory

The lab provides facilities for testing solar energy devices for thermal and photovoltaic applications. The solar simulator is mainly used for the research and development of solar energy applications in buildings, product tests of solar energy equipment and heat loss measurements of various building façade elements and devices.

Supporting Documents
Academic Referee's Report

Compulsory - Two Academic Referee's Reports are required.

 

Applicants of the HKPFS are required to have two online academic referee’s reports submitted before the application deadline for HKPFS.

Research Proposal

Compulsory - A standard form must be used for the submission of research proposal.  Please click here to download the form.

Transcript / Certificate

Compulsory

  • Certificate(s) of the Bachelor's/Master's degree. Applicants with academic qualifications from the Chinese Mainland must provide both the Degree Certificate (學位證書) and Graduation Certificate (畢業證書).

  • Full set of the transcript(s) of the Bachelor's/Master's degree. It should include results of all the coursework and project(s) during the whole study period, a final GPA / grade / score together with an explanation of the marking scheme / grading system.

  • (If your final GPA / score is not shown on the transcript) A letter of certificate certifying your final GPA / score together with an explanation of the grading system issued by the Registrar or an authorised official of your institution with an official stamp or letterhead should be provided.

Notes

  • For graduates, transcripts should be the final version with the graduation date.  For current study, the latest transcript or testimonial issued by the institution should be provided. Unofficial copies are not accepted.

  • Applicants of 3-year full-time / 6-year part-time Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programmes should provide a transcript or an official proof showing that “dissertation” or “thesis” is an award requirement of the Master’s degree.

Others

Optional

  • Official proof in support of your publication records, scholarships, awards / prizes, professional or research-related work experience, professional-related community service.

  • Official document(s) with an official stamp or letterhead showing your class ranking issued by the Registrar or an authorised official of your institution.