Charles Wang Wai Ng

Charles Ng Wang-wai is the Vice-President of Institutional Advancement at HKUST, Clear Water Bay Campus . He also serves as the CLP Holdings Professor of Sustainability , Chair Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), and Director of State Key Laboratory of Climate Resilience for Coastal Cities (SKL-CRCC)

Education Charles W. W. Ng attended the University of Bristol where he completed his PhD degree in civil engineering in 1993. From 1993 to 1995, he worked as a post-doctoral research associate in soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering with professors Malcolm Bolton and Sarah Springman at the University of Cambridge.

Career Ng joined HKUST in 1995 as assistant professor and was promoted to chair professor in 2011. He was conferred the first CLP Holdings Professor of Sustainability .

Awards In 2002, Ng was the recipient of the Mao-Yisheng Youth Award by the Chinese Institute of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering for his significant contributions in geotechnical engineering. In 2007, he received the Overseas and Hong Kong, Macau Young Scholars Award by the National Science Foundation of China. In 2015, he received the 2nd Prize of Scientific Technological Advancement Award by the State Council of China He was elected as a fellow of Royal Academy of Engineering in 2020.

Ng's contribution to geotechnical engineering has been recognised by different academic societies. He is an overseas fellow of the Churchill College, the University of Cambridge (2005), a fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences and a Changjiang Scholar (2010–2013) (Chair Professorship in Geotechnical Engineering) by the Ministry of Education in China.

He is the recipient of multiple awards for his continuing research in soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering. +List of awards The lecture will be held on 24th March 2027.

Professional affiliations Ng is a chartered Civil Engineer (CEng) and a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (UK), the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers. He served as the 17th President of International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (2017-2021).

Ng served as the Editor-in-Chief of Canadian Geotechnical Journal. He is an Associate Editor of the Landslides journal . He serves as an Editorial Board Member of leading geotechnical journals: Computers and Geotechnics , Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment , Chinese Journal of Geotechnical Engineering and Journal of Zhejiang University-Science A (Applied Physics & Engineering) .

Achievements Ng has published extensively in the field of unsaturated soil mechanics, soil-structure interaction, debris flow mitigation and geotechnical design. He holds 29 licenses and invention patents. More than 88 PhD and 62 MPhil students have graduated under his supervision .

Ng is globally ranked 2nd in the list of Top 2% Scientists Worldwide in September 2025 by Stanford University in Geological & Geomatics Engineering; Civil Engineering subfield.

Personal life On 5 January 2022, Carrie Lam announced new warnings and restrictions against social gathering due to potential COVID-19 outbreaks. These new restrictions came into effect from 7 January 2022 onwards for a period of 14 days (up to 20 January 2022). On 3 January 2022, Ng had attended a birthday party hosted by Witman Hung Wai-man, with 222 guests. At least one guest tested positive with COVID-19, causing many guests to be quarantined. Ng was photographed at the party without wearing a mask.