Two PhD Candidates of UM WonInternational Student Paper Competition Awards

Two PhD students of the Faculty of Science and Technology (FST) of the University of Macau (UM) won, with their successful research and high-quality papers, international student paper competition awards in the Tenth International Conference on Enhancement and Promotion of Computational Methods in Engineering and Science which was held last month.

The Tenth International Conference on Enhancement and Promotion of Computational Methods in Engineering and Science (EPMESC X) took place in Sanya, China, from 21 to 23 August 2006. Scholars from 23 countries and regions had contributed their works, which will be collected in a book “Computational Methods in Engineering and Science”. There was also a student paper competition in the conference. After the two assessment phases of “Paper Review” and “Presentation”, a total of three International Student Paper Competition awards were given out. Among them, two are for the following papers from UM, namely, Tam Hou Kuan’s “Factor Analysis of Convective Heat Transfer for a Horizontal Tube in the Turbulent Flow Region Using Artificial Neural Network” (Supervisors: Professor Tam Lap Mou – UM, Professor Tam Sik Chung – UM, and Professor Afshin J. Ghajar - Oklahoma State University, USA), and Hoi Ka In’s “Updating Noise Parameters of Kalman Filter using Bayesian Approach” (Supervisors: Professor Mok Kai Meng and Dr. Yuen Ka Veng, UM). The winning paper of Hoi Ka In was based on the work related to a project sponsored by the Fund for the Development of Science and Technology of Macao. Both winners are PhD candidates of UM. Hoi Ka In is a student from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of FST, while Tam Hou Kuan studies in the Department of Electromechanical Engineering.

EPMESC had its first meeting in Macao in 1985. The conference is, thereafter, held alternately in Macao or in a city in China, such as Guangzhou, Dalian and Shanghai. Professor Iu Vai Pan, Rector of UM, had been serving on the EPMESC Conference Board for years, and in the tenth meeting, he was officially elected to be the president of the Conference Board. As for the student paper competition, it started in the ninth EPMESC conference in 2003. Its aims are to offer students with the opportunity to present their research results in front of the international scientific community. It also provides a platform for young researchers to build friendship among their peers. The next EPMESC conference will be held in Kyoto, Japan, in December 2007.