News

The Department of Earth Sciences is delighted to announce that our final year students Mr Ng Man Hoi Kevin (Geology BSc, class of 2019) and Mr Yung Chung Yeung Benjamin (Geology BSc, class of 2019) were presented with the champion and second runner-up prize respectively in the AGS (HK) Final Year Projects Competition held on July 5, 2019.

Supervised by Professor Mei Fu Zhou, Kevin works on chemical extraction method of regolith-hosted rare earth elements deposits in South China, which currently contributes to over 95% of global production of heavy rare earth elements. The on-going project aims to develop a more effective and environmental-friendly ore extraction technique. Benjamin’s project was supervised by Dr Wong Ngai Yuen, Louis to study the influence of thermal treatment on the cracking behaviour of granite under mode I loading in both macroscopic and microscopic view. The findings give new inspirations and insights about rock engineering design and analysis of underground nuclear waste storage sites.

The Final Year Projects Competition 2019 was held by the Association of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Specialists (AGS) of Hong Kong among four local universities. The competition aims at recognizing excellence in the research fields of geotechnical/geological/geo-environmental engineering at the final year undergraduate level and to provide a platform for graduating engineers/geologists to enhance their presentation skills.

Congratulations to Kevin and Benjamin!