Shuk Wun Cham and Ka Yin Yip, Civil and Environmental Engineering, were awarded the Student Paper Award 2011 by The Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation (Hong Kong Branch). Their paper centered on "Modeling Transport Management and Land Value". Both students graduated in 2011.

Dickens King Hei Chan, Ming Hong Cheng, and Kam Fung Tam, Electronic and Computer Engineering, won the Varitronix 30th Anniversary Scholarship for the Best Final Year Project on Display Technology 2010-11 for their study on "3D Displays". All the students graduated in 2011. Varitronix Limited, one of Hong Kong’s leading LCD manufacturers, has donated HK$150,000 to the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering for the final year project award from 2008-2012 (HK$30,000 each year).

MPhil student Wai Kit Chan, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, together with Prof KL Yeung and Dr Wei Han, research associate, in the same department, won the Best Poster Award at the International Conference on Materials for Advanced Technologies 2011. The winning poster title focused on "Advanced Ozone-membrane Reactor for Treatment of Endocrine Disrupting Compounds in Water". Wai Kit graduated in 2011.

An undergraduate programming team, comprising Qifeng Chen, Yuliang Li, and Tsz Yeung Ng, Computer Science and Engineering, won the championship in the Association for Computing Machinery-Hong Kong Programming Contest 2011. Eight local tertiary institutions participated.

The joint study "Optimal Lattices for MIMO Precoding" by PhD exchange student Dzevdan Kapetanovic from Lund University in Sweden and MPhil student Hei Cheng, Electronic and Computer Engineering, won the Best Student Poster Award at the first IEEE Swedish Communication Technologies Workshop. The workshop was held at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden.

PhD student Hui Cheng, Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management, won the Best Paper Award at the 8th International Conference on Service Systems and Service Management in Tianjin. His paper explored "The 3PL's Optimal Transportation Pricing Problem in Dynamic Lot Sizing Models".

Ka Chun Cheung, Chun Yim Wong, and Siu Hung Yuen, Computer Science and Engineering, received the Hong Kong Information Technology Federation ICT Final Year Scholarship 2010-2011 Certificate of Merit for their final year project "A Collaborative Android Application Providing an Online Google Map with Audible Cantonese Location Pronunciations for Expats and Tourists in Hong Kong". The application assists people from overseas by providing pronunciation and written text for place names in English, Cantonese and Putonghua. The system utilizes a built-in Android text-to-speech (TTS) engine for English, an open source TTS engine for Putonghua, and a custom-made TTS engine for Cantonese. It also links to a website called Expat/Tourist Sharing Board, which was created by the students and provides additional useful information. Ka Chun is a final year student while Chun Yim and Siu Hung are 2011 graduates.

Undergraduate Marco Cheung, Chemical & Bioproduct Engineering and General Business Management, and his Eco$ave teammates won the first prize in the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition in Singapore. The inter-university team, comprising HKUST and University of Hong Kong students, was awarded prize money of US$36,000 for its innovative solution to encourage rational detergent use among consumers.

PhD student Shammi Akter Ferdousi, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, won the Gold Award for the Best Poster Presentation at the Asia Nanotech Camp 2011. The camp fosters young leaders in nanotechnology in the region, especially PhD and postdoctoral researchers, by providing a platform for them to learn more about developments in the field in different countries. The gathering was hosted by Korea's Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, and organized by the Korea Nanotechnology Research Society, National Nanotechnology Policy Center and Asia Nano Forum.

PhD student Jing Guo, Electronic and Computer Engineering, received the 2011 IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC) Student Scholarship Award for her paper "A 38.6nV/Hz0.5 -59.6dB THD Dual-Band Micro-Electrode Array Signal Acquisition IC". The conference is the premier event devoted to integrated circuit development.

MPhil students Jenny Huang and Jiale Han, Mechanical Engineering, came first and third respectively in the CISCO Best Student Paper Awards at the 2011 International Conference on Electronic Packaging Technology and High Density Packaging.

Yuen Man Ip, Year 2, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, received the Paul and May Chu Sportsman/Sportswoman of the Year Award 2010-11 for her dedication to fitness and her role as founding captain of the Student Women's Soccer Team. The award was established in 2010-11 with a fund raised in the Fun Run in honor of the departing President Prof Paul Chu in 2009.

PhD student Xiaolin Li, Electronic and Computer Engineering, was selected to join the 2011 Asia-Oceania Top University League on Engineering (AOTULE) Summer Student Exchange Program. This enabled Xiaolin to spend three months conducting research with a host researcher at Tokyo Institute of Technology. He was one of 12 students from the 11 member universities of AOTULE to join the program.

PhD candidate Nathan Liu and Prof Qiang Yang, Computer Science and Engineering, won the Springer Prize for Best Interdisciplinary Paper at the 20th ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management. Their paper, titled "Transferring Topical Knowledge from Auxiliary Long Text for Short Text Clustering", focused on how to effectively classify short text in Social Media such as Twitter. The conference was held in Glasgow, UK. Nathan and Prof Yang, together with 2011 PhD graduate Bin Cao, research assistant Luheng He, also won third place in the 2011 ACM Challenge, which is the world’s best known annual competition in data mining. This year’s competition was attended by over 2,000 teams worldwide. The HKUST group teamed up with researchers and students at Shanghai Jiao Tong University to propose a collection of large-scale machine learning and data mining techniques to tackle this year’s data mining task, which focused on personalized musical recommendations. Their algorithm was also rated the best among all the submissions in the single-model category. The 2011 Challenge was organized by Yahoo! Labs

A Civil and Environmental Engineering postgraduate team, comprising PhD students Sung Hei Luk (team leader), Wenqi Du, Po Chi Suen and Zhe Wang, won the Best Presentation Award First Prize at Introducing and Demonstrating Earthquake Engineering Research in Schools 2011 (IDEERS 2011). The event was held by the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering in Taipei. An undergraduate team consisting of Chi Ho Lau, Ka Sing Lau, Sin Hang Law and Ting Kwok Wan won the Most Creative Architectural/Art Design Award. Participants had to create a model using inexpensive materials and then subject their structure to a shaking test.

PhD student Daniel Yiu Wing Mo, Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management, received a prestigious Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fellowship 2010/2011. The honor recognizes academic excellence among postgraduate students. Daniel was also awarded a Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fellowship in 2004 during his Master's degree.

PhD student Zhiliang Qian, Electronic and Computer Engineering, has received the RGC-Fulbright Hong Kong Dissertation Research Programme – Junior Research Award 2011-12. The award enables senior scholars and advanced postgraduate students from Hong Kong universities to conduct research at American universities.

MPhil student Miao Yu, Electronic and Computer Engineering, received the Best Presentation award at the Asian Science and Technology Pioneering Institutes of Research and Education (ASPIRE League) forum in Seoul, Korea.