Imperial accolade for first class scholar

Read about the success of the first Lee Family Scholarships recipient, Gary (Yuangao) Liu, who was recently awarded with the annual Unwin Prize.

When Dr Richard Lee (Chemical Engineering 1960, PhD 1964) donated a £2 million gift to the College to establish an endowed scholarship fund for postgraduate study in 2002, it would have been difficult to predict the immense success of the Lee Family Scholarships’ first recipient, Gary (Yuangao) Liu, who was recently awarded with the annual Unwin Prize.

Gary enrolled at the College in 2003, embarking upon a PhD in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He joined the College from Tsinghua University in Beijing where he completed an undergraduate degree in Hydraulic Construction and later worked as a research assistant.

His studies at Imperial focused on the elastic stability of rectangular plates under non-uniform stresses: “I wanted to provide a better understanding of the load-resisting capacity of such plates,” said Gary. “It was my aim to progress more economic and safer designs for plates in the future.” Gary’s innovative research will also have positive implications for structural engineering as a whole: “I have produced the solutions for a fundamental partial-differentiation equation,” explains Gary. “This is likely to have enormous application in structural engineering.”

Imperial College was Gary’s first choice for postgraduate study, but expensive tuition fees, coupled with the high cost living in London, meant that Gary couldn’t have contemplated studying here without a scholarship. “I quite simply wouldn’t have been able to study at Imperial without the generosity of Dr Richard Lee,” said Gary. “Although my family would have liked to offer their support, it would have been virtually impossible for them to even consider it. My scholarship has been truly life changing.”

The Unwin Prize was established in memory of Professor Unwin, one of the College’s first engineering professors. The prize is awarded annually to the best postgraduate research thesis in the Department of Civil Engineering. After submitting what his supervisor, Professor Milija Pavlovic describes as “an outstanding piece of work”, Gary became the Unwin Prize’s 2007 beneficiary.

“Gary’s work was quite outstanding,” said Professor Pavlovic. “He is probably one of the best PhD students I have ever had, despite the fact that several of my past students have also won the Unwin Prize. Both examiners agreed that in their experience this was the best PhD they had ever examined.”

Surprisingly modest about his success, Gary says: “It came as a huge surprise to me to be given this award, but it reassures me that all of my hard work has paid off.” He continues: “I believe it is not only an award for me, but also for my supervisor, Professor Milija Pavlovic, and for Dr Richard Lee, who have both been so instrumental in my achievements.”

Gary now hopes to gain some more practical experience in industry, and wishes to stay in London for a while before considering moving back to his home town in China. His success is an honour to the generosity of Dr Richard Lee, as Gary comments: “I hope that my achievements and the outcomes of the other Lee Family Scholars will assure Dr Lee, and other alumni considering making a gift to the College, that such a donation is worthwhile.”