Sustainability is the critical challenge we must all work together to meet in the near term if we are even to think about having a long term. Over the past two decades, geotechnical engineering expert Prof. Charles Ng has made significant contributions to this essential task.

Prof. Ng is a leading global authority on advanced unsaturated soils mechanics and eco-friendly green slope engineering. Slope stabilization is of key importance in hilly Hong Kong and a vital task around the world as urbanization and a growing lack of flat land brings more city expansion into fragile mountainous terrains with their risk of landslides. He is also a frontier explorer of geo-energy and geo-environmental engineering: onshore, in relation to energy foundations for the heating and cooling of buildings; and offshore through wind farm consultancy and research into submarine landslide challenges in deep-sea extraction of methane hydrate, a potential source of energy-intensive fuel.

Such work has led Prof. Ng to a profound respect for the complex natural materials he works with and a drive to impart the essential role of geoengineering in sustainability to students and decision-makers globally. His theoretical breakthroughs and novel engineering tools now help geotechnical researchers and engineers locally, nationally, and internationally to advance. He is a recipient of a State Scientific and Technological Progress Award, Second Class, and an Overseas Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, a Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences, American Society of Civil Engineers, and Institution of Civil Engineers, and recently became the first Chinese person to be elected President of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering since its establishment in 1936.

His own multinational research group – “students from around the world will take their geotechnical knowledge home and widen the impact” he notes – is making a valuable practical difference too. Applications include more effective use of the “natural engineering capabilities” of plants as slope stabilizers; a patented three-layer landfill cover system making use of construction waste to protect the environment from landfill gas emissions; and a large-scale, international award-winning, five-year project focused on debris flow damage and sustainable mitigation as climate change and more extreme weather multiply landslide hazards.

Prof. Ng received his PhD from the University of Bristol, UK, and undertook postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge before joining HKUST in 1995. He launched the first postgraduate course on unsaturated soil mechanics in Asia in the late 1990s and served as the inaugural Director of the University’s landmark Geotechnical Centrifuge Facility for 14 years. In 2015, he successfully organized the first International Conference on Geo- Energy and Geo-Environment (GEGE), now a regular biennial event.

His goal is to leave a legacy that can bring benefit to the world as a whole. In boosting sustainability through discovery, application, awareness-raising and training of future eco-engineers, Prof Ng appears well on his way.