CUHK
News Centre

2021 marks the 30th anniversary of the Faculty of Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). The Faculty was privileged to have Mr. Alfred Sit, Secretary for Innovation and Technology and Professor Alan Chan, Provost of CUHK, as guests of honour at the 30th Anniversary Celebration Banquet last Sunday (5 December). Over 200 alumni, faculty members and friends joined in celebrating the anniversary at the event.

In his opening address, Professor Martin D.F. Wong, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering said, “Our anniversary celebration is a great opportunity to honour those who have made an impact through engineering and technology, to celebrate our past and to imagine what we can accomplish together in the future. We are deeply indebted to our late Professor Sir Charles K. Kao, Nobel Laureate in Physics, former Vice-Chancellor of CUHK and the Father of Fiber Optics. Under his leadership, the Faculty was founded in 1991. The Faculty is now 30 years old and has grown into a world-class research and education unit with 6 departments, 131 tenure-system faculty members, and 3,800 students.”

With the concerted effort of its professors and alumni, the Faculty has made remarkable achievements in research and education in the past and will continue to contribute to the advancement of engineering across society locally, nationally and globally. Just in time for the Faculty’s anniversary celebrations, its Computer Science was recently ranked 10th globally and 1st in Hong Kong in the recently published 2022 Best Global Universities Rankings by U.S. News & World Report, which evaluates nearly 1,750 top universities across 90 countries.

In September this year, CUHK and the national-level Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory collaborated to set up the CUHK Interdisciplinary Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Institute to promote research breakthroughs in AI applications in engineering, science and medicine. The Faculty was awarded three major grants from the HKSAR Government under the InnoHK initiative to establish three research centres in the Hong Kong Science Park. They are the Hong Kong Centre for Logistics Robotics led by Professor Yunhui Liu, the Multi-Scale Medical Robotics Center co-led by Professor Samuel Au and Professor Philip Chiu (Medicine), and the Centre for Perceptual and Interactive Intelligence led by Professor Helen Meng. These InnoHK centres promote translational R&D in their respective application domains which will in turn help advance the innovation and technology of Hong Kong.

The Faculty is a cradle for start-ups. Notably, it has founded Wisers Information Ltd (1998), which was among the first local university spin-offs, and recently two local unicorns, SenseTime and SmartMore. Moreover, the Faculty co-directs CUHK’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation (EPIN) minor programme to cultivate entrepreneur talents and multi-disciplinary education.

Going further in education, the Faulty recently took the lead and launched the first BEng programmes in Hong Kong in Financial Technology (FinTech) in 2017 and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in 2019. In addition, the Faculty established the CUHK Engineering FinTech Applied Research (CEFAR) Academy to create a new pipeline of talent in the Hong Kong’s rapidly emerging FinTech industry. CEFAR partners with government, industry, NGOs, professional bodies as well as other universities and research institutes to provide research experience and internship opportunities for students.

CUHK’s engineering students continue to win numerous competitions and awards such as the championship in the 2019 ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest (Robocon) in Mongolia, marking the first such victory for Hong Kong students. CUHK also took home the championship of the Robocon 2021 Hong Kong Contest.

With its solid foundation and excellent achievements, the Faculty of Engineering at CUHK is embracing future challenges and opportunities. As Professor Martin D.F. Wong, said, “The Faculty of Engineering will continue to play important roles in today’s 4th industrial revolution and digital economy, injecting impetus into Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area and impacting the region’s talent nurturing and research development in engineering.”

About the Faculty of Engineering, CUHK

Founded in 1963, CUHK is a forward-looking comprehensive research university. The Faculty of Engineering, established in 1991, offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes through its six departments: Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering, Mechanical and Automation Engineering, and Systems Engineering and Engineering Management. The Faculty of Engineering has world-class professors coming from prestigious universities possessing extensive teaching experience and outstanding research track records. It is also equipped with state-of-the-art facilities to support teaching and research activities. The Faculty’s mission is to train future leaders in engineering, to pursue knowledge at the frontier of modern technology, and to apply advanced technology to meet societal and human needs. For more information about CUHK Faculty of Engineering, please refer to: www.erg.cuhk.edu.hk.