Professor Charles Wang-Wai Ng is the Vice-President for Institutional Advancement.  He also serves as the CLP Holdings Professor of Sustainability, Chair Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Director of the State Key Laboratory of Climate Resilience for Coastal Cities.

Previously, Professor Ng held several key leadership positions, including Vice-President of HKUST (Guangzhou). At HKUST, he served as Associate Vice-President for Research and Development; Associate Vice-President for Research and Graduate Studies; Dean of the HKUST Fok Ying Tung Graduate School; and Associate Dean of the School of Engineering. 

Professor Ng earned his PhD from the University of Bristol in 1993 and carried out postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge, where he was subsequently elected an Overseas Fellow of Churchill College. He joined HKUST as an Assistant Professor in 1995 and rose through the ranks to become Chair Professor in 2011 – a testament to his outstanding contributions to both academia and the University. His commitment to nurturing global talent is reflected in his supervision of over 85 PhD and 60 MPhil students from more than 20 countries and regions to successful graduation. 

An internationally acclaimed expert in soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering, Professor Ng specializes in unsaturated soil mechanics, eco-geotechnics, debris flow mitigation and landslide prevention, and soil-structure interaction engineering such as piled foundations, deep excavations and tunnels. According to Stanford University’s 2024 list of the world’s top 2% scientists, he is the youngest scholar ranked among the top five professors for career-long impact in the sub-fields of Geological & Geomatics Engineering and Civil Engineering. 

Professor Ng has published approximately 450 SCI journal articles and 250 conference papers, achieving an H-index of 99. He has delivered more than 100 keynote addresses and state-of-the-art reports across six continents. He is the main author of four reference books: (i) A Short Course in Soil-Structure Engineering of Deep Foundations, Excavations, and Tunnels (Thomas Telford, 2004); (ii) Advanced Unsaturated Soil Mechanics and Engineering; (iii) Plant-Soil Slope Interaction; and (iv) Advanced Unsaturated Soil Mechanics: Theory and Applications (2nd edition) (CRC Press: Taylor & Francis, 2007, 2019, and 2024, respectively).

Professor Ng has also received numerous awards, including the 2025 Telford Gold Medal from the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) — the highest honour bestowed by the ICE since its establishment in 1838. He also earned the 2025 Donald Stanley Award from the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, the 2025 Scott Sloan Paper Award (highest cited paper in previous 5 years) from Computers and Geotechnics, the R. M. Quigley Award from the Canadian Geotechnical Society, which he has won four times for best papers published in Canadian Geotechnical Journal in 2023, 2016, 2012 and 2007, the 2022 Varnes Medal from the International Consortium on Landslides, the 2022 Fredlund Award (highest cited paper published in Canadian Geotechnical Journal in previous 5 years) from the Canadian Geotechnical Society, and the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers Best Geotechnical Paper Awards in 2018 and 2022. He has also been honored with the 2017 Telford Premium Prize from the ICE, the Henry Adams Award from the Institution of Structural Engineers (UK), the inaugural Tan Swan Beng Award from the Southeast Asian Geotechnical Society.  Additionally, he received the Teaching Excellence Appreciation Award at HKUST for the 2018-19 academic year .

In the Chinese Mainland, he received the prestigious 2025 National Natural Science Award (1st class) from the Chinese Society of Rock Mechanics and Engineering (中國岩石力學與工程學會2025年度自然科學一等獎（排名第1）), 2022 Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress (何梁何利基金科學與技術進步獎). He was also awarded the 2020 National Natural Science Award (2nd class) (中國國家2020年度自然科學二等奖（排名第1）) and the 2015 Scientific Technological Advancement Award (2nd class) from the State Council (中國國家2015年度科技進步獎二等獎（排名第4）). Furthermore, he was recognized as an Overseas, Hong Kong, and Macau Young Scholar by the National Science Foundation of China (國家傑青(海外)) in 2007 and received the 2002 Mao Yisheng Youth Award (茅以升科學技術獎－土力學及基礎工程青年獎) from the Chinese Institute of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering for his significant contributions to geotechnical engineering etc.