Deep Archive: Faculty of Engineering

Module: 01 Academics · Deep Profile Updated: 15 June 2026 This piece traces the history, departments, and programmes of HKU's Faculty of Engineering (founded 1912) in depth. For a faculty-level overview see faculties.md; for all departments see departments.md.

# 1. History: an engineering education as old as HKU itself

The Faculty of Engineering was one of the three founding Faculties when the University opened its doors — HKU was established in 1911 and teaching began in 1912. According to HKU Faculty of Engineering — History^※:

• The Faculty traces its origins to the 1911 founding of the University and the creation of the first Chair of Engineering in 1912.
• The first scholar ever appointed by HKU was the Faculty's inaugural Dean, Professor C.A. Middleton Smith (a mechanical engineer by training, MIMechE, who arrived in 1912). He held the Taikoo Professor of Engineering chair until his retirement in 1939.
• In its very first academic year, 1912–13, the Faculty enrolled 37 students — a majority of the University's total undergraduate body of 54 — which speaks volumes about the weight engineering carried from day one.

# Pre-war and post-war

• From 1913 onwards, the three streams of Civil, Mechanical, and Electrical Engineering gained formal resourcing recognition and the Faculty awarded the B.Sc. Eng. degree.
• University histories record that the pre-war Faculty "met Hong Kong's demand for qualified engineers while also supplying first-class professionals to China."
• After the war, the Department of Civil Engineering played a central role in Hong Kong's reconstruction and underpinned the territory's development as an industrial hub through the 1960s and 1970s.

# The rise and repositioning of Computer Science

HKU's engagement with computing also began early. As HKU Department of Computer Science — Our History^※ recounts, it can be traced back to the late 1960s, when the University installed its first mainframe and set up a computing centre. The Department of Computer Science long remained one of the Faculty's core departments.

A major reorganisation in 2024: according to an HKU press release^※, the Department of Computer Science was merged into the newly established School of Computing and Data Science (CDS) on 1 July 2024, combining with the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science from the Faculty of Science. From that date, Computer Science no longer sits within the Faculty of Engineering (see departments.md).

# List of Deans (1912–present)

According to the Faculty of Engineering's official list of past Deans^※, the Deans since the Faculty's founding in 1912 are as follows (some years saw multiple short tenures due to wartime conditions or personnel changes; the table reproduces the official list as published):

This centennial roll-call neatly illustrates the Faculty's governance trajectory: from a founding era led by expatriate engineers (British figures such as Middleton Smith, Redmond, and Roffey) to a post-war transition into the hands of local and ethnic-Chinese scholars (Wong, Cheung Y.K., Lee, Cheung P.Y.S., Chao, and others) — a shift broadly synchronised with the wider localisation of academic leadership during the University's decolonisation.

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

According to the Faculty's official history page^※, following the departure of Computer Science, the Faculty now comprises four departments:

The Faculty also jointly offers Biomedical Engineering (BEng[BME]) with the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine; the School of Biomedical Engineering operates as an inter-faculty unit.

# 3. The BEng programme landscape

Based on the Faculty's BEng programmes page^※, the BEng programmes offered by the Faculty (and its affiliated units) include:

Programmes such as Computer Science (CompSc) and Artificial Intelligence & Data Science (AI&DataSc) are now the primary responsibility of CDS (see programs.md).

# 4. Scale

Figures from the Faculty's official history page^※:

# 5. Research strength and innovation infrastructure

According to the 2026 QS World University Rankings by Subject and an official HKU press release^※, the Faculty's Civil and Structural Engineering discipline was ranked 20th globally that year; of all 51 HKU disciplines assessed, 29 placed in the global top 50, with 8 in the global top 20. The engineering cluster's overall performance forms a crucial pillar of the University's interdisciplinary research strength.

The Faculty also boasts one of the highest concentrations of research talent among Hong Kong's universities: according to the same official materials, its academic team includes 4 Academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering — accounting for 50% of all such Academicians in Hong Kong's higher-education sector — and 13 Academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, representing roughly 41.9% of the territory's institutional total. Since 1998 the Faculty has been granted 1,577 patents, reflecting sustained investment in applied research and technology transfer.

In terms of physical innovation infrastructure, the Faculty houses the Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing, a roughly 2,400 m² space billed as one of Asia's largest university-based maker spaces, equipped with 3D printing, laser cutting, AR/VR, and robotics facilities for hands-on teaching and prototype development. It is a concrete embodiment of the Faculty's drive to marry traditional engineering education with a contemporary hands-on innovation ethos.

# 6. Gaps / to-be-updated

• Impact of Computer Science's departure on student numbers: post-2024 figures are still being consolidated; this entry uses existing data from the Faculty's published history with years noted.
• CDS internal department and programme boundaries: CDS is a new inter-faculty unit established in 2024; the precise division of programmes between CDS and the Faculty of Engineering should be verified against the latest official pages.
• Detailed achievements of past Deans during their tenures: the official list provides only names and dates; specific contributions require consultation of Faculty annual reports or monograph-length institutional histories (such as the series edited by Christopher Munn).