Prof Irene Man-Chi Lo of the HKUST’s Department of Civil Engineering has just been honored with a prestigious international award in the environmental field. This is the first time a Hong Kong Chinese scientist has helped find a solution to underground pollution on Danish soil, and she is one of only three Chinese recipients ever to have received this honour since the award was established in 1968.
Prof Lo, Associate Professor of HKUST’s Civil Engineering Department, along with her former PhD student and her research partners in Denmark has been selected by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) for the 2007 Samuel Arnold Greeley Award. This prestigious award is presented by the Society to recognize Prof Lo and her research group on their outstanding paper “Field Monitoring of a Permeable Reactive Barrier for Removal of Chlorinated Organics,” in the February 2006 issue of the Journal of Environmental Engineering. The award was presented on 15 May 2007.
Prof Lo’s innovation successfully turned a land area in Denmark with polluted groundwater to satisfactory level. She is one of the pioneers in conducting field monitoring and applying tracer study in the technology of Permeable Reactive Barrier (PRB), which allows better understanding of the effectiveness of the technology, and geochemical variation and hydraulic flow pattern in the groundwater and along the PRB.
“It is my honour to receive this international award. It also provides a golden opportunity for knowledge exchange between Hong Kong and Denmark in environmental engineering.” said Prof Lo.
Prof Lo’s research interest includes remediation technologies for contaminated soils and groundwater, clay liners for waste disposal facilities and gasoline storage tanks, equilibrium and non-equilibrium pollutant transport in saturated and unsaturated soils, and physical and chemical water treatment processes.
Prof Lo joined HKUST in 1992 and is also the Associate Director of the University’s Environmental Engineering Graduate Program. She received her MS and PhD degrees from the University of Texas at Austin in 1990 and 1992 respectively. In 2004, she received the ASCE James R. Croes Medal which is the most prestigious award to recognize scholars with exceptionally meritorious achievements in civil engineering. She is the first Chinese scientist as principal investigator to receive this award since 1912. She is also recognized as an outstanding teacher, being the recipient of HKUST’s 2006 Michael G Gale Medal for Distinguished Teaching which is annually awarded to the faculty member who best exemplifies the devotion to teaching and the ability to inspire and motivate students.
For media enquiries, please feel free to contact :
Luk Kam Wing
Tel: 2358 6306
Email: kluk@ust.hk
Donna Wong
Tel: 2358 6317
Email: donnaw@ust.hk
