Prof Tongxi Yu and Dr Ricky Lee of the Mechanical Engineering Department have been elected 2003 Fellows of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), a leading professional organization with a worldwide membership of 125,000. The honors also highlight the contributions the Department has made towards the advancement of knowledge and research relevant to the economic development of Hong Kong.

A study based on the Science Citation Index (SCI) finds that the Mechanical Engineering Department ranked among the top three in the world from 2000 to 2003 in terms of the number of academic papers published in SCI journals per faculty member per year. This places HKUST alongside other universities such as Princeton, Stanford, Caltech and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

A team of four undergraduate students from the Global Business stream of the School of Business and Management, Hannafew Hang Ting Chan, Vishaal Prem Lalwani, Brian Ho-kei Lee, and Mandy Man Kuen Lee, took the top prize at the McGill Management International Case Competition. This is the first time a team from Hong Kong has won the prestigious award. The judges commended them for an engaging and professional presentation and their thorough and practical recommendations.

Two civil engineering graduates from the class of 2003, Wai Hang Lee and Ivy Yee Man Chung, won first prize and first runner-up prize respectively in the Best Final-Year Geotechnical Project Competition, organized by the Geotechnical Division of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers. Another 2003 graduate, Wing Sze Tong, won the Best Undergraduate Student in Geotechnical Subjects Award, also organized by the Division. This is the fourth year in a row that HKUST Civil Engineering students have taken top honors in HKIE competitions.

Tsz-wing Leung (Accounting and Finance, Year 2) was named champion in the China-Hong Kong Investment Simulation Competition 2003-04, sponsored by SHK Financial Group. The prize included a scholarship covering one year of his tuition at UST. More than 8,000 university students from Hong Kong and the Mainland participated in this year's competition.