About the Lab

Dr. Yu Daeyoung

1969-2009

Obituary

Dr. Yu Daeyoung, born in 1969 in Seoul, Korea, received his BSc in Civil Engineering from Seoul National University, Seoul in 1993, and his MSc in Hydraulics in 1995. After serving military service, Daeyoung pursued a Ph.D. degree under the supervision of Professor I.W. Seo of the Department of Civil Engineering in Seoul National University. In 2000, Dr. Yu obtained his Ph.D. in the field of Environmental Hydraulics.

From 2000 to 2002, Dr. Yu served as Senior Researcher at the Water Resources and Environmental Research Division of the Korea Institute of Construction Technology. Professor Seo highly recommended Dr. Yu to Professor Joseph Lee, Redmond Chair of Civil Engineering of The University of Hong Kong. In October 2002, Dr. Yu joined the Department of Civil Engineering of The University of Hong Kong as Research Associate.

At The University of Hong Kong, Dr. Yu has been working in the Croucher Laboratory of Environmental Hydraulics as a key member on experimental hydraulic research and hydraulic modeling. He has served as Research Assistant Professor in the Department since October 2006. Many graduate students have benefited from Dr. Yu’s advice on experimental work. He was also in charge of the hydraulic model tests for many flood alleviation projects in Hong Kong. Dr. Yu's expertise in experimental techniques and his extensive involvement with physical hydraulic modelling have provided a useful and valued input to several government drainage projects in Hong Kong. Dr. Yu has a passion for Hong Kong and the continuous development of the Croucher Laboratory.

To the students and acquaintances, Dr. Yu was a strong and quiet scholar. To his close colleagues, he was a passionate and caring man. After work, Dr. Yu played squash and enjoyed hot spicy dishes.

Dr. Yu was a devoted husband and father, spending time with the family during the weekends. His younger son was born in Hong Kong and both of his sons are studying in Hong Kong. He enjoyed writing blogs and photography with his elder son.

He will be sorely missed by his family, colleagues, friends and students.

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EULOGY

Professor Joseph Hun-wei Lee

Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President

Redmond Chair of Civil Engineering

The University of Hong Kong

April 2, 2009

Dr. Daeyoung YU obtained his B.S. in Civil Engineering from Seoul National University (SNU) in 1993, a M.S. in 1995; after working in industry for a year, he returned to pursue postgraduate studies and obtained his PhD in Hydraulics in August 2000. Before he came to Hong Kong in October 2002, he was a Senior Researcher in the Water Resources and Environmental Research Division, Korea Institute of Construction Technology, during which time he was awarded an Environmental Technology Prize from the Ministry of Environment of Korea in 2001. He was a research associate, Postdoctoral Fellow and then Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at HKU. During his second year at HKU, he was also partly supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation.

Daeyoung was highly recommended to HKU by Professor Il-won Seo of Seoul National University as one of his best research students. All his past colleagues in Korea, including his former supervisor, Dr. H.S. Woo, Vice President of the Korea Water Resources Association and the Korea Institute of Construction Technology, had an extremely high regard for his talents.

Daeyoung and I shared the same interests in applying hydraulics to solve environmental problems; he was always interested in quantitative prediction of environmental sustainability issues - ecological restoration of rivers, water scarcity and desalination, design of advanced wastewater effluent diffusion systems. He had an excellent grasp of the connection between civil engineering and fluid mechanics, and had the capability to work on a broad range of problems with utmost research integrity. Notwithstanding his solid theoretical foundations, Daeyoung had a passion for experiments, and believed that there is always a need for experimentation for the practical solution of complex engineering problems, and as a source of new theoretical ideas.

In this age of powerful and increasingly affordable high performance computing, experimental researchers with good engineering sense are not easy to come by. We have been fortunate to have had Daeyoung in our group. He contributed significantly to the general development of the hydraulic laboratory, in particular advanced laser-based measurement techniques, supervision and mentoring of research and final year project (FYP) students, and in developing basic and applied research projects. He was a recipient, as PI or Co-I, of 4 CERG or GRF grants.

During his time at HKU, Daeyoung performed excellent engineering research. In particular, over the past three years he was introduced to and contributed to the hydraulic modeling of several major government flood control projects – notably the Hong Kong Island West Vortex Intake Study and the Lai Chi Kok Transfer Scheme. In 2005, he helped unravel the causes of the puzzling flooding on Smithfield Road – with a solution that worked in practice. These practical projects stimulated basic research that led to a new theory for the design of tangential vortex intakes – this work just appeared in the March 2009 issue of the Journal of Hydraulic Engineering of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He also lectured in a one-day Continuing Professional Development (CPD) course on “Vortex Intakes” given in September 2008 to over 30 practicing engineers working on the design of vortex drop structures.

Daeyoung was a pleasant, helpful and energetic colleague with a good command of spoken and written English, and often introduced the Croucher Environmental Hydraulic Laboratory projects to visitors. He served as a good bridge between us and our Korean colleagues in the HKU-SNU joint ventures. He had an outgoing personality, with an expansive sort of global outlook. In our field and conference trips to Mainland China and beyond – Beijing, Nanjing, Three Gorges, Pearl River Delta, USA, Italy – I could see he was very much attracted by the challenges and opportunities in water environment engineering in Mainland China and the region. I often said to him that a locally-based international high tech environmental engineering consultant company has yet to emerge. In 2008, he was offered a Senior Lectureship by the University of Cape Town in South Africa; it is fortunate for us that he chose to stay and take on more teaching responsibilities.

The untimely and sudden death of Daeyoung on March 27, 2009 – at such a young age – came as a shock to all of us. Over the past nearly-7 years, we have regarded Daeyoung as a highly-valued colleague, and I personally had high hopes that he would blossom and flourish at HKU. His tragic departure is a great loss to us. May he rest in peace.

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