Student Award 2026

The team comprising Dr Shen Shiyu (Postdoc), Dr Yang Hao (Research Assistant), and Miss Jin Shutong (PhD student) has received the Ecosystem Contribution Award (生態貢獻獎) in the Prometheus Programme (盜火者計劃) organized by Open Security Research (OSR), a cybersecurity and cryptography company based in Shenzhen, China, specializing in chip security, side-channel analysis, and hardware-software vulnerability testing. The winning project, supervised by Prof Ray Cheung, is titled “Optimizing Computational Efficiency Using Sparse-Packed Bootstrapping”.

The Prometheus Programme is an open-source competition which aims to advance the ecosystem for fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). It brings together researchers and developers to contribute to LattiSense, an open-source FHE platform, and promotes collaboration on practical privacy-preserving computing technologies.

A team of Postdoc and PhD students, comprising Dr Wei Zhengqi, Mr Lu Fengwang, and Mr Wang Shaocong, has been awarded the Champion in IET Young Professionals Exhibition & Competition (YPEC) 2026 – Postgraduate Section. The winning project, supervised by Prof Henry Chung, is called "Second-Life Battery Valorization: Autonomous Energy Router for Grid-Scale Storage".

YPEC, organized by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), is a dynamic platform for young professionals from different segments to exhibit their engineering and technology innovation.

Three EE teams have won the First, Second and Third Prize in the 12th Hong Kong University Student Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition.

The competition, organized by Hong Kong New Generation Cultural Association, aims to promote innovation and entrepreneurship among the young generation. It is a platform facilitating students to further develop their potential, sharpen their presentation and interpersonal skills and become future innovation and entrepreneurship leaders.

Two PhD students supervised by Prof Din-ping Tsai won three awards at the 5th China Metamaterials Conference (CMCC).

• Mr WANG Zhihui- Academic Newcomer Award for Postgraduate Students (研究生學術新人獎*) for the project titled “From Spectral Encoding to Retrieval: Chromatic Confocal Metrology and Multispectral Imaging”.
• Mr WU Jiajun - Outstanding Poster Award (優秀壁報獎*) and Academic Newcomer Award for Postgraduate Students (研究生學術新人獎*) for the project titled “Chromatic confocal 3D measurement by dispersion engineered metalens”.

*The Chinese version shall prevail as the official award title.

CMCC is the most influential academic event in the field of metamaterials in China. Since its inception, the conference has brought together top scholars, researchers, and industry experts from around the world to discuss cutting-edge advances and future directions in metamaterials research.

Miss Sun Yiqing, PhD student supervised by Prof Gengbo Wu and Prof C H Chan, has won the Rising Star Award for Women in Microwaves at IEEE MTT-S International Wireless Symposium 2026. The winning paper is titled “Integrated Sensing and Communication Enabled by a Space-Time Metasurface Antenna”.

The award aims to recognize and honor outstanding female graduate students with innovative research achievements, to fully inspire the potential of women in scientific research, to cultivate more female talents in the field of microwave technology, and to contribute women's scientific and technological expertise to advance the technology development.

Dr REN Bowen, a PhD graduate in 2026 and supervised by Prof Alex Wong, has won the Student Paper Award (Third Prize) at Marina Forum (MarFor) 2026. The winning paper is titled “A Self-Adaptive Reconfigurable Metasurface for Electromagnetic Wave Sensing and Dynamic Reflection Control”.

MarFor is an annual conference in Singapore, organized by the IEEE RFID Chapter of Singapore. The student paper competition features excellent student-authored papers published within recent 4-year period on the topic of antennas and beam-steering structures.

Prof Derrick Jiang (Associate Professor), Dr Ben Zhang (Postdoc), Dr Zhou Jiayu (Postdoc), Mr Zhu Zhaozheng (PhD student), and scholars from Hefei University of Technology, Nanjing Institute of Technology, Harbin Engineering University, and Southeast University has won the Best Paper Award at the 2026 IEEE 9th International Electrical and Energy Conference (CIEEC 2026). The winning paper is titled “A Node-Level Pulse Density Modulation-Based Control for Wireless Power Transfer in Networked AUV Energy Supply Systems”.

CIEEC provides a technical exchange platform for the academic and engineering communities in the field of electricity and energy. The Best Paper Award is presented to papers demonstrating outstanding originality, technical contribution, and potential impact in the field.

The CityUHK Underwater Robotic Team was awarded the First Runner-up at the IET/MATE Hong Kong Regional of the MATE ROV Competition 2026. The team has officially qualified for the 2026 MATE ROV Competition World Championship, which will take place in St. John's, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada, in June this year.

The winning team, which is supervised by Prof Ray Cheung, Associate Provost (Digital Learning) and Professor of EE, is presented below.

To know more about the competitions, please check IET/MATE Hong Kong Regional of the MATE ROV Competition.

Mr Zhihui WANG (PhD student) has won the Best Paper Award at the Conference on Metaphotonics (META) 2026, which was held as part of Optics & Photonics International Congress (OPIC) in Yokohama, Japan. The winning paper, supervised by Prof Din-ping Tsai (Chair Professor), is titled “Achieving intensity asymmetry in nonlinear wavefront shaping with a nonlocal meta-lens”.

OPIC 2026 featured 18 specialized international conferences, and META 2026 was one of them providing a great opportunity for researchers in the field of metaphotonics from around the world to share advancements, discoveries, and challenges.

Mr Yuzhi Yang (PhD student) has won the Best Presentation Award at IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC) 2026. The winning paper, co-authored and supervised by Prof S C Tan (Chair Professor), Prof Ron Hui (Chair Professor), and Prof Wu Jiayang (Research Assistant Professor), is titled “Real-Time Adaptive ZVS Angle Control in Wireless Power Transfer Systems Based on Simple Voltage Sampling”.

The IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition highlights practical applications in power electronics through peer‑reviewed technical sessions, industry‑driven presentations, educational seminars, and an exposition.