KE Spotlight - Community Engagement - HKU Knowledge Exchange

Faculty Knowledge Exchange Awards 2021

The annual Faculty Knowledge Exchange (KE) Awards recognise each Faculty’s outstanding KE accomplishment that has made demonstrable economic, social or cultural impacts to benefit the community, business/industry, or partner organisations. Results of the 2021 Faculty KE Awards are now available.

HKU Engineering develops energy-efficient building technologies to reduce solar heat gain and energy consumption

Among the various energy-efficient building technologies that have been developed under the leadership of Professor Christopher Chao (Dean of Engineering and Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering at HKU), passive radiative cooler and smart window are the two innovative and promising technologies, which are ripe for industries. Passive radiative cooler is a wall panel for building façade to provide cooling effect for indoor environments by radiative cooling without additional energy input. Thermochromic smart window blocks solar radiation at high temperature or allow it in during cold weather by regulating its properties to maintain indoor thermal comfort. Installation of these two technologies reduces solar heat gain and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system for energy consumption in building. More importantly, they require no electricity and are eco-friendly.

KE Excellence Award, HKU Innovator Award and HKU Young Innovator Award

The university-level KE Excellence Award was introduced in 2015-16 to recognise the significant impact that our academic staff had made to benefit society. The KE Excellence Award 2020 was awarded to Dr Caroline Dingle, Dr David Baker, Dr Timothy Bonebrake, and Professor David Dudgeon of the Faculty of Science.

The new HKU Innovator Award and the HKU Young Innovator Award have been established to recognise outstanding Faculty members whose innovations demonstrate exceptionally high potential impact (legacy or projected legacy) with transformative results to foster development. The new HKU Innovator Award and the HKU Young Innovator Award were awarded to Professor Chuyang Tang and Dr Ka Wai Kwok of the Faculty of Engineering respectively.