EE graduate wins Young Inventor Silver Award

A former PhD student of the Department of Electronic Engineering (EE), Dr Tse Kwok-kuen, has won the Silver Award in the "Young Inventors Awards 2000" organized by the Far Eastern Economic Review and Hewlett-Packard Asia Pacific. Dr Tse is awarded for his revolutionary technique to lower the cost of extracting maximum power from a solar panel. Through a novel switching control method, he has designed an inexpensive power converter that can transfer automatically the full amount of solar energy absorbed by a solar panel, regardless of weather conditions and without microprocessors.

Dr Tse, now an EE Academic Visitor, is working on the next stage of the converter. Under the co-supervision of Professor Ron Hui and Dr Henry Chung, he seeks to further enhance functioning of the device as well as to explore the marketing potential of his invention.

Two other EE entries were selected for the contest? list of finalists: a wideband flat antenna for wireless communication by research students Mak Chi-lun, Wong Hang, Shum Yuk-hei and Lau Ka-keung; and a compact transformer without magnets by former PhD student Tang Sai-chun.

The "Young Inventors Awards" is an annual contest created by the organizers to encourage the spirit of invention among students in Asia. A total of 298 entries was received from 14 countries including Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, China, Australia and New Zealand.