Five scholars from Hong Kong and Macao are among this year’s Guanghua Engineering Science and Technology Award laureates — China’s most prestigious engineering prize — for bold breakthroughs in biomedicine, structural safety surveillance, novel materials, semiconductor technology, and artificial-intelligence technologies.

The awards were announced on Thursday afternoon in Beijing, at a ceremony held during the second plenary session of the academician general assemblies of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), the nation’s twin pillars of academic excellence.

CAE said this year’s winners emerged via a multistage selection process, with academicians from each of the Academy’s specialist branches paring down a list of 471 high-caliber candidates to 40 winners, whose work cuts across mechanical systems, information technology, chemical processing, metallurgy, materials innovation, and energy infrastructure, among others.

Hong Kong claims three of this year’s honorees. Ng Siew-chien, associate dean (research) of the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Medicine, Ni Yiqing, chair professor of Smart Structures and Rail Transit at Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Wang Xunli, chair professor in the Department of Physics at City University of Hong Kong.

Ng’s brought to the clinic an AI-and-metagenomics platform that screens for inflammatory bowel disease and gut microbiome imbalances early, without the need for invasive procedures.

Ni has built a safety net of sensors and algorithms around the country’s largest infrastructure — his full-life-cycle monitoring systems now watching over giant bridges and busy rail lines across the country.

And Wong has innovatively used neutron scattering to explore the hidden dynamics of complex materials, his innovations now underpinning the country’s most ambitious big-science projects.

Macao is represented by two scholars: Mak Pui-in, chair professor at the University of Macau’s Institute of Microelectronics, and Xu Chengzhong, dean of the school’s Faculty of Science and Technology, for their research results in microelectronics and AI, respectively.

The award was created by CAE in 1995 and handed out for first time in 1996. It is given out every two years in two categories: the top Achievement Award, which honors one person with 1 million yuan ($147,480), and the standard Award, which carries a purse of 200,000 yuan.

Over the award’s three-decade history, 423 engineers and technologists have received a prize.

Contact the writer at wanqing@chinadailyhk.com