Dr Charles Wang-wai Ng is currently the CLP Holdings Professor of Sustainability, Chair Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Associate Vice-President for Research and Development at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He is the President of International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (2017-2021).

Professor Ng earned his PhD degree from the University of Bristol, UK in 1993. After carrying out a period of post-doctoral research at the University of Cambridge between 1993 and 1995, he returned to Hong Kong and joined HKUST as Assistant Professor in 1995 and rose through the ranks to become Chair Professor in 2011. Professor Ng was elected an Overseas Fellow by Churchill College, the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences, and a Changjiang Scholar (Chair Professorship in Geotechnical Engineering). He is also a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (UK), the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers.

He has received many awards including the 2018 Hong Kong Institution of Engineers best Geotechnical Paper Award, the 2017 Telford Premium Prize for best paper from the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Henry Adams Award from the Institution of Structural Engineers (UK), the first Tan Swan Beng Award from the Southeast Asian Geotechnical Society, and the R. M. Quigley Award from the Canadian Geotechnical Society three times for his three best papers published in 2007, 2012 & 2016. He was conferred the Mao Yisheng Youth Award by the Chinese Institute of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering for his significant contributions in Geotechnical Engineering over the years. He was one of the recipients of the 2nd Prize of 2015 Scientific Technological Advancement Award by the State of China.

Professor Ng has supervised 56 PhD and 50 MPhil local and international students to graduation and mentored dozens of postdoctoral fellows and visiting scholars. He has published some 350 SCI journal articles and 300 conference papers. He is the main author of three reference books: (i) Soil-structure Engineering of Deep Foundations, Excavations and Tunnels by Thomas Telford, (ii) Advanced Unsaturated Soil Mechanics and Engineering, and (iii) Plant-Soil slope Interaction by Taylor & Francis. Professor Ng has been invited to deliver more than some 80 state-of-the-art reports and keynote lectures in six continents worldwide.