Charles Ng

Professor Charles W. W. Ng is the Vice-President of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in Guangzhou campus. He is also the Dean of HKUST Fok Ying Tung Graduate School, CLP Holdings Professor of Sustainability and a Chair Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at HKUST.
Professor Ng was elected as a Changjiang Scholar (Chair Professorship in Geotechnical Engineering), a Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering, the Royal Academy of Engineering, UK, and Overseas Fellow of Churchill College, the University of Cambridge. Professor Ng is the immediate Past President of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (2017 – 2022). Currently, he is an editor-in-chief of the prestigious Canadian Geotechnical Journal.

Professor Ng has published some 400 SCI journal articles and 250 conference papers (with a H-index of 96). He is the main author of four reference books: (i) A Short Course in Soil-structure Engineering of Deep Foundations, Excavations and Tunnels by Thomas Telford in 2004, (ii) Advanced Unsaturated Soil Mechanics and Engineering, (iii) Plant-Soil slope Interaction and (iv) Advanced Unsaturated Soil Mechanics: theory and applications (2nd edition) by CRC: Taylor & Francis in 2007, 2019 and 2024, respectively. According to the Stanford University published the top 2% Scientists Worldwide in September 2024, he is the youngest ranked within top five professors, in the category of career-long impact in the sub-fields: Geological & Geomatics Engineering; Civil Engineering.

He has received many awards including the 2025 Telford Gold Medal by the Institution of Civil Engineers (The highest honour awarded by the Institution. He is the first awardee from greater China since its establishment by the Institution in 1838), 2025 Donald Stanley Award by the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering for the best paper in Environmental Engineering, 2022 Varnes Medal by the International Consortium on Landslides, 2022 Fredlund Award from the Canadian Geotechnical Society, and the R. M. Quigley Awards from the Canadian Geotechnical Society four times for his four best papers published in 2007, 2012, 2016 & 2023. Moreover, he won the Teaching Excellent Appreciation Award for the academic year 2018-19 at HKUST.