 Cho Yan Chan, Lai Kin Leung, and Man Lam Wong, Year 3, Electronic and Computer Engineering, won the Varitronix 30th Anniversary Scholarship for Best Final Year Project on Display Technology 2011-12. Their study looked at "Photo-Aligning Materials and Technology: Physics and Application in Liquid Crystal Devices". Varitronix Limited, one of Hong Kong's leading liquid crystal display manufacturers, donated a total of HK$150,000 over five years from 2008/09 to the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering to run the award.
 Undergraduate Qifeng Chen, Computer Science and Engineering, was ranked 12th in the Google Code Jam World Final 2012 in New York, the best achievement by a Hong Kong student since the competition started in 2003. Some 35,000 professionals and students participated in the contest in 2012, with only the top 25 invited to the world final. Qifeng attributed his outstanding performance to his leadership experience in HKUST's ACM-ICPC Programming Team, his studies, and his participation in the University's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.
 PhD students Wei Chen and Jianying Zheng, Electronic and Computer Engineering, gained the Best Student Paper Award at the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Information and Automation for their paper on "Linear Quadratic Optimal Control of Continuous-Time LTI Systems with Random Input Gains", co-authored with Prof Li Qiu. |
 Marco Hoi Fai Cheung, Year 2, Chemical & Bioproduct Engineering and General Business Management, received the first prize at the fifth Henkel Innovation Challenge. The event is an international ideas competition for students in Europe, Asia-Pacific, the United States and Mexico. Marco and his School of Business and Management partner Yi Sun, created a product they called Loctite Watts, which makes it possible to convert heat waste energy into useful power. The HKUST student duo beat 19 other teams at the international finals of the contest, held in Warsaw, Poland. They received a Round the World ticket and travel vouchers worth €1,000.
 Undergraduate Roy Ming Hin Chung, Computer Science and Engineering, won the highly competitive "Talent Meets Bertelsmann 2012" business program, organized by world-leading media company Bertelsmann in Beijing. He received the opportunity to attend a training workshop in Germany and a graduate job offer from the company. |
 PhD student Allen Yichuan Deng, Civil and Environmental Engineering, received the Student Travel Grant Award at the 12th International Conference on Construction Applications of Virtual Reality, held in Taiwan. His paper was entitled "Mapping BIM Models and 3D GIS Models Using Instance-Based and Linguistic Methods", co-authored with Prof Jack Cheng. He also received the Best Project Award at the pre-conference workshop. |
 PhD candidate Shaoming Huang, Computer Science and Engineering, gained first place in the Student Research Competition at the ACM SIGPLAN Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI) Conference. PLDI is one of the most prestigious computer science conferences in the area of programming languages and software engineering. The competition consisted of three sections, involving extended abstracts, posters, and oral presentation.
 PhD student Tongde Huang, Electronic and Computer Engineering, won the Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Solid-State and Integrated Circuit Technology. The paper was entitled "High-Performance Depletion-Mode AlN/GaN MOSHFETs with Regrown Source/Drain", and co-authored by Xueliang Zhu and Prof Kei May Lau. |
 An undergraduate Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering student team comprising Fung Chu Li, Bowen Sun (Dual Degree Program), Hon Ting Wong, and Lang Xu won the First Class Prize at the Energy Saving and Emission Reduction Competition held at X’ian Jiaotong University. |
 PhD student Sandy Xiuyi Lin, Mechanical Engineering, received the Best Poster Paper Award (First Prize) at the 15th European Conference on Composite Materials for the paper entitled "Effects of Reduction and Size of Graphene on Mechanical and Electrical Properties of Graphene Oxide Papers". It was co-authored by Q B Zheng, N Yousefi, X Shen and Prof Jang Kyo Kim. |
 2012 Electronic and Computer Engineering final year students shone at the HKEIA Innovation & Technology Project Competition 2012, with several final year projects receiving awards. The Gold Award went to Anthony Hon Pan Lo and Shavian Wai Shan Ng for their "Object Searching Robot with Kinect". The Bronze Award was won by Hon Lun Lai, Wing Lung Leung, and Po Lam Liu for the project entitled "Muscle-Computer Interface". Ryan Sheshan Aaron and Da Qiang Yeoh received a Merit Award for their work on "Smart Glasses: Twiptor". The contest seeks to recognize and reward students with outstanding final year projects that demonstrate excellence in technology and innovation.
 PhD student Hyunmin Seo, Computer Science and Engineering, and Prof Sunghun Kim received the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award at the 27th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering. Their paper focused on "Predicting Recurring Crash Stacks". The award is the most prestigious software engineering conference paper award. The award is given to selected papers from top SIGSOFT-sponsored software engineering conferences. Only around 10% of accepted papers (1%-2% of submitted papers) are selected for the award.
 Two teams of Computer Science and Engineering PhD students won championships in the Nokia Mobile Data Challenge 2012. Yin Zhu, Erheng Zhong, and Bin Wu were awarded the championship for the "Semantic Place Prediction" task for their project "Feature Engineering for Place Category Classification". Ben Tan, Erheng Zhong, and Kai Xiang Mo were awarded another championship for the "Demographic Prediction" task for their project "Your Phone Understands You". The competition attracted more than 200 teams worldwide.
 PhD student Yin Zhu, Computer Science and Engineering, was awarded a prestigious Google Fellowship in Mobile Computing. He was one of only four people to receive a fellowship in the Greater China area. The Google PhD Fellowship Program recognizes outstanding PhD students doing exceptional work in computer science, related disciplines, or promising research areas. It was launched in China in 2010. | 
