In-depth Profile: Faculty of Engineering

Module: 01 Academics · In-depth Profile Last updated: 10 July 2026 This profile traces the history, the origins of its four departments, and the curriculum of HKU's Faculty of Engineering (1912). For a faculty-level overview see faculties.md; for all departments see departments.md; for the century-long evolution and the "Taikoo" professorships see engineering-faculty-history.md.

The short answer: The Faculty of Engineering was one of the three founding faculties when HKU opened in 1912, with Taikoo Professor C.A. Middleton Smith as its first Dean. After pre-war departmental splits and mergers, wartime closure and a 1960 revival, the Faculty now comprises four departments — Civil Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Data and Systems Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering — following the departure of Computer Science in 2024.

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# 1. History: engineering education as old as the University itself

The Faculty of Engineering was one of the three founding faculties when HKU was established in 1911 and began teaching in 1912. According to the Faculty of Engineering's history page^※:

• The Faculty's history dates back to the University's founding in 1911 and the creation of the first Chair of Engineering in 1912.
• The first scholar appointed to HKU was the Faculty's first Dean, Professor C.A. Middleton Smith (arrived 1912, trained in mechanical engineering, MIMechE), who held the Taikoo Professorship until his retirement in 1939.
• In the first academic year, 1912–13, the Faculty of Engineering took in 37 students — a majority of the University's 54 undergraduates — a measure of engineering's weight in the founding years.

# Pre-war departmental splits and laboratory buildings

In the early years, engineering teaching was squeezed into the basement of the Main Building. According to the Department of Mechanical Engineering's history^※, as student numbers grew and the basement became inadequate, the Faculty built the Ho Tung Engineering Workshop (1925) and then the Peel Engineering Laboratory (1934) along Pokfulam Road, greatly improving hands-on training conditions. The Faculty also gained professional accreditation from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) in the 1930s.

Departmental boundaries shifted several times during this period: from 1913 to 1920, civil and mechanical engineering formed a single department under one head, Middleton Smith himself; from 1920, with F.A. Redmond appointed Chair Professor of Civil Engineering, mechanical and civil engineering separated, and the two coexisted with electrical engineering as three parallel strands. This early "merge-then-split" institutional history is the starting point for understanding today's four-department structure (see below).

# War, closure and the 1960 revival

The Pacific War and the Japanese occupation all but destroyed the Faculty's buildings and facilities. According to the Department of Mechanical Engineering's history^※, when HKU reopened in 1946, the Cox Committee recommended suspending the mechanical and electrical engineering programmes to concentrate resources on the civil-engineering-led post-war reconstruction. The suspension lasted until 1960, when the Kadoorie Committee persuaded the government that graduate employment prospects justified reviving the departments, and mechanical and electrical engineering were re-established. The Faculty's real expansion came in the 1960s–70s as the University grew overall, and it developed into one of the largest faculties with five departments.

# The rise and departure of computer science

HKU was an early mover in computing education. According to the Department of Computer Science's history^※, its roots go back to the late 1960s, when HKU installed its first mainframe and established a computing centre. The Department of Computer Science was long a core department of the Faculty of Engineering.

The major change of 2024: according to an HKU press release^※, the Department of Computer Science joined the newly established School of Computing and Data Science (CDS) on 1 July 2024, integrating with the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science from the Faculty of Science. Since then, computer science has no longer been part of the Faculty of Engineering (see departments.md).

# List of Deans (1912–present)

According to the Faculty of Engineering's official list of deans^※, the deans since the Faculty's founding in 1912 are as follows (some years saw multiple short terms due to wartime or staffing changes; the official list is reproduced as-is):

Spread over more than a century, the list neatly charts the Faculty's governance shift from the founding era — dominated by British engineers such as Middleton Smith, Redmond and Roffey — to the post-war period, when local and ethnic-Chinese scholars (Wong, Cheung, Lee, Cheung, Chao and others) took the helm, broadly in step with the localisation of academic leadership through the University's wider "decolonisation".

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# 2. The four departments: a century of distinct yet interwoven threads

The Faculty's "faculty–department" two-tier structure is long-standing. Each of the four existing departments has its own independent yet intersecting lineage, traced below from each department's official history.

# Department of Civil Engineering: as old as the University, the mainstay of post-war reconstruction

According to the Department of Civil Engineering's official page^※, the Department was founded in 1912, the same year as the University and the Faculty, and is the only one of the four that survived the wartime suspension unbroken — precisely because the Cox Committee had chosen to "concentrate resources on civil engineering", making it the academic mainstay of post-war Hong Kong's rebuilding. Today its research spans five areas: construction engineering and management, geotechnical engineering, structural engineering, transportation engineering, and water and environmental engineering. The Department's "Project Mingde" turns real construction sites into classrooms, sending students to poor regions of mainland China and Southeast Asia to help build infrastructure and educational facilities — a flagship of "experiential learning". In recent years, departmental scholars have been named "highly cited researchers", with work published in journals including Nature Communications.

# Department of Mechanical Engineering: the first Dean's home ground

The Department of Mechanical Engineering traces its bloodline directly to the first Dean, Middleton Smith himself. According to the Department's history^※, it was administratively merged with civil engineering from 1913 to 1920, then became independent in 1920. After the Cox Committee's 1946 suspension and the 1960 revival, it was rebuilt by C.D. Weir, W. Smith and others, before Professor H.C.H. Gurney (1967–1973) — a Cambridge man specialising in fracture mechanics and thermodynamics — recruited research-oriented faculty and restructured the department. In 1984 the Sir Robert Ho Tung Professorship was established, whose first holder, Professor C.L. Chow, earned an international reputation in damage mechanics; after Professor A.T. Chwang arrived in 1991, the department's research broadened into control systems, materials science, nanotechnology and renewable energy; in 2011 the Kingboard Materials Engineering Professorship was added, first held by Professor A.H.W. Ngan.

# Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering: a department reborn in 1960

According to the Faculty of Engineering's history^※ and official departmental materials, although electrical engineering was one of the Faculty's three directions before the war, it was shelved under the Cox Committee's 1946 suspension recommendation and only re-established as a major department of the Faculty in 1960. Since then its research has come to span communications and information technology, microelectronics and photonics, integrated circuits (ICs), AI-oriented electronic systems, and big-data mining. In the 2026 QS subject rankings^※, HKU's electrical-and-electronic/computer-science subject cluster remains firmly among the world's best.

# Department of Data and Systems Engineering: from industrial engineering to data (renamed 2024)

The most dramatically transformed of the four is the former Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering. According to the Department's official history^※, its predecessor, the Department of Industrial Engineering, was established in May 1973, admitted its first cohort of BSc(Eng) students that September, and was the first university department in Hong Kong to offer an industrial engineering degree; in September 1989 it was renamed the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering (IMSE); in 2024 it was renamed again, to the Department of Data and Systems Engineering (DASE), with the undergraduate programme changing from "Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management" to "BEng in Data and Systems Engineering" from September 2025. The renaming trajectory is a microcosm of the Faculty's broader shift in gravity from traditional industrial manufacturing toward data science and systems methodology.

Note on terminology: because the DASE rename is recent, some official pages and this site's existing cards still use the old name "Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering". This profile follows the latest official history in using "Department of Data and Systems Engineering"; readers should map the old name accordingly.

# The four departments at a glance

Placed side by side, the four departments' research focuses and renaming trajectories trace the Faculty's overall movement from a "construction–mechanical" heavy-engineering tradition toward contemporary "data–intelligence–low-altitude" directions:

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# 3. Current departmental structure (post-2024 reorganisation)

According to the Faculty of Engineering's history^※, with the departure of Computer Science the Faculty now comprises four departments:

The Faculty also jointly runs Biomedical Engineering with the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine (BEng[BME]); the School of Biomedical Engineering is a cross-faculty unit.

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# 4. The BEng programme family

According to the Faculty of Engineering's BEng programmes page^※, the BEng programmes offered by the Faculty (and affiliated units) are:

Computer Science (CompSc) and related programmes such as AI & Data Science (AI&DataSc) are now run by CDS (see programs.md). The Faculty's four-year programmes, in place since 2012, set core courses across four "Areas of Inquiry", and include language training and engineering internship/workshop requirements.

# Common admissions: one code, 6963

Since 2012 the Faculty has used "common admissions". According to the Faculty's undergraduate admissions page^※, applicants apply for any BEng programme under a single JUPAS code, 6963, spend Year 1 on the Faculty-wide "Year 1 Engineering Core", and only in Year 2 are streamed by academic performance into a declared major, with the major/minor confirmed no later than the first semester of the final year. This "enter the faculty first, choose your department later" design lets students spend a full year testing their interests and learning the ropes of each department before committing — deliberately blurring the "four-department boundaries" at the admissions gateway for a year.

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# 5. Taught postgraduate programmes (MSc)

Beyond the undergraduate level, the Faculty's taught-master's (MSc) portfolio has expanded in recent years as the Faculty's focus has shifted. According to the Faculty's MSc programmes page^※, the Faculty offers 14 MSc(Eng) programmes across its four departments, taught by HKU academics, professors from overseas institutions and industry practitioners, with entrance scholarships available for outstanding full-time/part-time master's students:

Programme titles such as "Robotics and Intelligent Systems", "Low-Altitude Technology" and "Integrated Circuits and Electronic Systems" are a direct reflection of the Faculty's recent bets on robotics, the low-altitude economy and semiconductors.

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# 6. Scale

According to the Faculty of Engineering's history^※:

These 40,000 alumni are spread across Hong Kong's public utilities, government and industry — by the Faculty's own account, a large share of the city's senior engineers and engineering managers were trained there, and it has been supplying talent to Hong Kong's engineering profession for over a century.

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# 7. Research strength and innovation infrastructure

According to the 2026 QS World University Rankings by Subject and an HKU press release^※, the Faculty's Civil and Structural Engineering subject ranked 20th worldwide in that year's edition. Across HKU's 51 assessed subjects, 29 placed in the global top 50 and 8 in the global top 20; the engineering subject cluster is a major pillar of the University's cross-disciplinary research strength.

The Faculty's density of research talent is among the highest of any Hong Kong institution. By the same official figures, its academic staff include 4 members of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) — 50% of all CAE fellows at Hong Kong universities — and 13 members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) — about 41.9% of all CAS fellows in Hong Kong's universities. The Faculty has accumulated 1,577 granted patents since 1998, reflecting sustained investment in applied research and technology transfer.

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# 8. Research centres and institutes

The Faculty's research extends beyond the departments, carried by a network of cross-departmental and cross-faculty centres and institutes. According to the Faculty's research centres and institutes page^※, representative units include:

• Centre for Environmental Engineering Research — hosted by Civil Engineering, focused on environmental engineering;
• Centre for Innovation in Construction and Infrastructure Development (CICID) — construction engineering and infrastructure development;
• Centre for Water Technology and Policy — run jointly with the Faculty of Social Sciences, pairing water technology with public policy;
• Law and Technology Centre — run jointly with the Faculty of Law, working at the interface of technology and law;
• Biomedical Engineering Centre — independently operated, corresponding to the Faculty's biomedical engineering strand run with the Faculty of Medicine.

The organisational affiliations are themselves a clue: environment, water, law, biomedicine — the Faculty's research increasingly cannot be contained within a single department, and phrases like "run jointly with the Faculty of Social Sciences" and "run jointly with the Faculty of Law" are footnotes to the cross-disciplinary drift of contemporary engineering research.

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# 9. Innovative education: Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing and student teams

On the physical side of innovation infrastructure, the Faculty operates the Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing. According to an HKU opening press release^※, the Wing occupies the ground and lower-ground floors of the Hui Oi Chow Science Building, covering about 2,400 square metres over two levels. Fully operational in autumn 2020, with an official opening ceremony on 1 December that year, it is billed as one of Asia's largest university "maker spaces", offering 3D printing, laser cutting, AR/VR and robotics facilities for hands-on teaching and innovation prototyping.

The Wing is overseen by the Faculty's Innovation Academy. According to the Innovation Academy's official page^※, it operates under the motto "REAL" — Responsibility, Entrepreneurship, Awareness, Leadership — and through workshops, sharing sessions, roadshows, student-designed courses, study trips and innovation exhibitions supports a set of standing student teams:

• HKU Racing — Formula Student electric racing;
• Robocon — the ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest, winners of the local championship four times;
• RoboMaster (HerKules) — large-scale arena combat robotics;
• Duckietown — an autonomous-driving and AI project originating from MIT;
• RoboFish (VAYU) — biomimetic underwater robots;
• Design, Build & Fly — the AIAA aircraft design competition.

The Innovation Wing connects to the engineering workshop requirements of the four-year curriculum, linking "laboratory — classroom — maker space — competition teams" into a single hands-on training chain. It is the Faculty's concrete vehicle for combining traditional engineering education with contemporary "hands-on" training philosophy.

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# 10. Notable figures: deans, academicians and alumni

The Faculty's century-long roll of names is another thread for understanding its academic tradition.

• C.A. Middleton Smith (1912–, Taikoo Professor) — HKU's first appointee and the Faculty's first Dean; Taikoo Professor until 1939; the source of the Mechanical Engineering department's bloodline.
• Y.K. Cheung (Dean 1978–1987) and P.Y.S. Cheung (Dean 1994–2000), J.H.W. Lee (Dean 2000–2003), C.Y.H. Chao (Dean 2018–2021) — representatives of the post-war and contemporary era in which ethnic-Chinese scholars took the Faculty's helm, witnessing the localisation of its governance.
• David Srolovitz (Dean 2021–present) — materials scientist and current Dean.

According to the Department of Mechanical Engineering's history^※, its distinguished alumni include Chinese Academy of Sciences academicians Liu Xianzhou and Shi Zhiren, industrialist Sir Sze Yuen Chung, and materials scientist Yiu-Wing Mai, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2008. These names, together with the four CAE fellows and thirteen CAS fellows noted above, form the Faculty's bedrock character: "founded on engineering, built on people".

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# 11. Buildings: Haking Wong Building and Chow Yei Ching Building

The Faculty's modern premises are concentrated at the western end of the Pokfulam Road campus. According to the Faculty's website^※ and HKU's Estates Office materials, the Faculty mainly occupies the eight-storey Haking Wong Building and the Chow Yei Ching Building — two teaching blocks completed in the 1980s–90s, named after the industrialists Haking Wong and Yei Ching Chow respectively. Nearly a century separates them from pre-war facilities such as the Ho Tung Engineering Workshop and the Peel Engineering Laboratory, tracing the Faculty's three-generation physical lineage: "pre-war workshops — post-war teaching blocks — contemporary maker space". The Hui Oi Chow Science Building, home to the Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing (see above), extends the Faculty's hands-on teaching toward the science side.

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# 12. Not covered / to be completed

• Impact of Computer Science's departure on the Faculty's student numbers: figures are still being updated following the 2024 reorganisation; this profile cites the existing figures from the Faculty's history and dates them.
• Details of CDS's internal structure and programme affiliations: CDS is a new cross-faculty unit established in 2024; its programme boundaries with the Faculty follow the official pages.
• Complete curriculum structure after the DASE rename: the Data and Systems Engineering undergraduate programme is being revamped from 2025–26; year-by-year curriculum details follow the official pages.
• Detailed achievements of individual deans: the official list gives only names and tenures; specific accomplishments would require the Faculty's annual reports or academic histories (such as the faculty history series edited by Christopher Munn).

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