Research and Innovation@CityU
A series of exhibition and technology forums will provide an opportunity for the CityU community and the public to review research excellence at CityU over the past 30 years. It is also a chance to explore the 33 research centres at CityU, the Knowledge Transfer Office, the Chow Yei Ching School of Graduate Studies, the CityU Shenzhen Research Institute and the CityU Chengdu Research Institute. The forums, which are a major part of the University’s 30th anniversary celebrations, will take place from 22 September to 3 October. The name of the event is “30 Years of Research and Innovation@CityU”.

President’s Lecture Series
Now in its fourth year, the President’s Lecture Series: Excellence in Academia offers a platform for CityU scholars to reach out to students and faculty across campus, bringing together scientists, engineers, economists, lawyers, sociologists and creative media exponents, to name but a few. With his talk “Equity and Inequity: Exploring Urban Residential Wealth”, Professor Ray Forrest, Chair Professor of Housing and Urban Studies and Head of the Department of Public Policy, will deliver on 16 September the first Lecture of the new academic year. The talk will explore how we understand the social, economic and political dimensions of the dramatic transformation in the distribution of wealth across many societies through urbanisation and rising levels of home ownership.

City University Distinguished Lectures
This series of talk, which started in 2002, provides a venue for the university community to listen to, meet, and talk with distinguished speakers from all over the world and from a variety of backgrounds. There are three talks scheduled for September. On the 8th, Professor Michael Waterman of the University of Southern California will give a talk titled “Mathematical and Statistical Problems from DNA Sequencing”.  On the 11th, Professor Zhang Jie, President of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, will give a talk titled “Pathway Towards Excellence—Institutional Incentive System at Shanghai Jiao Tong University”. On the 15th, Dr Thomas E. Mason, Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US Department of Energy, will give a talk titled “Science Technology for the Energy Challenge”.

Interpreting contest
The Department of Linguistics and Translation will host the first Cross-strait Interpreting Contest: Hong Kong Cup (Hong Kong Regional Final) on 27 September. Open for all translation undergraduate and postgraduate students registered under local tertiary institutions, the contest is part of the 5th Cross-strait Interpreting Contest to be held in October 2014 at Xiamen University where regional winners, including those from Hong Kong, mainland China, Taiwan and the UK, will compete for the champion's title. For details, please refer to the contest website.

30th anniversary student talks
A series of talks with popular artists/ writers to commemorate CityU’s 30th Anniversary will be organised by the Sub-committee on Student Programmes between September and November. Guest speakers from different backgrounds will discuss topics of interest, providing excellent opportunities for intellectual sharing. For more details, please visit here. 

Kudos
Professor Alain Bensoussan, Chair Professor of Risk and Decision Analysis in the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, received the 2014 W. T. and Idalia Reid Prize in Mathematics at a recent SIAM Annual Meeting. The Reid Prize was established by SIAM, which stands for the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, in 1993 to recognise outstanding work in, or other contributions to, the broadly defined areas of differential equations and control theory. A Fellow of SIAM, Professor Bensoussan researches applied mathematics and automatic control, stochastic processes and estimation, operations management and inventory control, finance, differential games, and risk analysis.

Two PhD students Chui Kwok-tai and Benjamin Li Yee-shing from the Department of Electronic Engineering (EE) won the Best Paper Award in the 2014 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics – China (ICCE-China 2014) with their smart measurement of individual appliances’ electricity usage aiming to achieve better energy management and prediction. The winning paper entitled “Appliance Signature: Multi-modes Electric Appliances” was supervised by Professor Henry Chung Shu-hung of EE and Dr Tsang Kim-fung, Associate Professor of EE, and co-authored by Mr Hung Faan-hei, Research Assistant of EE.

Ge Lei and Hu Xiao, PhD students from the Department of Electronic Engineering (EE), received First Prize in the Student Innovation Competition in the 2014 IEEE International Workshop on Electromagnetics and the JCAP Outstanding Paper Award in the 15th International Conference on Electronic Packaging Technology, respectively. Ge Lei’s winning project, supervised by Professor Luk Kwai-man, Chair Professor of EE, was called “Unidirectional Antenna for Cognitive Radio Applications”; Hu Xiao’s winning paper, supervised by Professor Chan Yan-cheong, Chair Professor of EE, was called “Electroless Ni-P-Zr02 Metallization for Lead-free Solder Interconnection”.

Professor Chiang Kin-seng, Chair Professor of EE, has been conferred the Sichuan Provincial Scientific and Technological Progress Award 2013–1st Class by the Sichuan Provincial People’s Government for his contributions to the study of the sensing mechanisms and methods with microstructures in optical fibers. The award is a result of his long-term collaboration with the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and Chongqing University.