Unleashing innovation: exploring AI applications in engineering

Prof Edwin Tso Chi Yan

Ir Prof. Tso joined CityUHK as an Assistant Professor in 2018 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2023. Since 2024, Ir Prof. Tso has assumed the role of Associate Dean (Internationalisation and Outreach) at the School of Energy and Environment at CityUHK. Additionally, in 2024, he was recognised as an RGC Research Fellow. Ir Prof. Tso’s research is centered on advancing the understanding of heat transfer, energy conversion, and engineered materials. His approach involves a fusion of theoretical insights and experimental investigations to develop groundbreaking solutions that enhance building thermal management, indoor built environments, space cooling, refrigeration, micro-droplet manipulation, and energy-efficient building technologies.

Furthermore, Ir Prof. Tso ranks among the Top 2% of the world’s most highly cited scientists in Mechanical Engineering since 2020. In addition to his academic achievements, Ir Prof. Tso has demonstrated a strong commitment to translational research by filing a total of 17 patents. Ir Prof. Tso founded a startup company called i2Cool Limited, current market value is HK$1 billion, focusing on passive radiative cooling technology. The venture has attracted over HK$140 million in investments to date. The flagship product of i2Cool Limited, known as iPaint, has garnered interest from various local and international entities, demonstrating the successful transfer of knowledge from academic research to tangible applications. This impact is evident in the product’s utilization and its contribution to society at large

Alan Mosca

Alan Mosca is the co-founder and CTO of nPlan, where he leads technology, research, and product, whilst developing thought leadership about forecasting and risk.

nPlan was founded in 2017 with the vision to become the AI platform on which decisions would be made about the future of projects and portfolios, through the use of AI that can forecast outcomes and automatically explore scenarios. Since being founded nPlan has collected the world’s largest dataset of completed construction schedules on roughly 750,000 projects, varying across infrastructure, engineering, and construction.

Before nPlan, Alan spent 7 years as a technologist in quantitative finance, on live trading systems, research, and front-office in both high-frequency trading and asset management. Alan has extensive experience in algorithm design and software engineering and holds a BEng in Computer Engineering, MSc in Computer Science, and doctoral research in machine learning theory.

Thompson Wong

Thompson is a technology professional with expertise in AI-driven software, energy savings, data architecture, and digital transformation. His career spans roles in property technology, where he optimised building services, business productivity, and now promotes AI ecosystems and AI data centres at Cyberport, driving innovation and proof of concept initiatives in cutting-edge technology sectors.

Oli Kelland

Oli Kelland is the Artificial Intelligence Lead for Europe at Mott MacDonald. With a background in Civil Engineering, Oli quickly orientated himself to Innovation Management, Systems Thinking, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Mott MacDonald. From a strong passion to improve the Construction Industry through digital transformation.

For AI, Oli managed the first group wide investigation into the usage of ChatGPT in February 2023 and co-authored a report with some of our preliminary findings with the ICE in March 2023. Nearly two years later, all Mott MacDonald staff have access to multiple business-wide Generative AI solutions to support project delivery. Justification for their deployment can be attributed to findings from various further AI projects Oli has led internally.

As a member of Mott MacDonald’s ‘Explore’ function, Oli currently focusses on understanding the start-up / scale-up landscape for AI technology. Enabling further use cases be brought online with appropriate governance (with considerations to emerging legislation such as the EU AI Act) and validation (following Mott MacDonald’s Innovation Framework, derived from the ISO 56000 family of standards).