Dear OCEESA Members:
Greetings! Happy Chinese New Year. As the OCEESA 2020 President, I would like to take this opportunity to report on OCEESA’s 2020 activities and look for your continuous support for the upcoming activities.
2020 Activities:
- OCEESA has established a quarterly webinar schedule to address different key environmental issues such as drinking water, green energy, water treatment, and air quality.
On September 20, there were over 70 engineers and scientists attended this first quarterly webinar in 2020. Dr. Sunny Jiang, Professor and Chair, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Irvine, presented “SARS-CoV-2 in Sewage.” Mrs. Lih-in W. Rezania, P.E., COVID-19 Case Investigator, Principal Public Health Engineer, Minnesota Department of Health, and Drinking Water Section presented “Drinking water research and research issues (COVID 19) in Minnesota.”
On December 6, there were over 40 engineers and scientists attended the second webinar. Solid waste is a serious environmental issue in highly urbanized cities like Hong Kong, and adaptation of innovative green energy technologies shall eventually aggregate global warming. This webinar introduced a few state-of-the-art technologies to tackle the emerging environmental issues, hence to create a circle economy toward sustainable development. Dr. Jason Lam, City University of Hong Kong presented the topic entitled “Electrocatalytic Chemicals and Fuels.” Dr. Sam Hsu, City University of Hong Kong, presented “Efficient and Stable Phototelectrochemistry of Hybrid Materials,”
- OCEESA has composed the first Micro-Movie competition on Raising Environmental Issues among our society (第一屆海外華人環境保護學會環境議題微電影創作比賽).
The goal of establishing the social media platform is to motivate our junior members, under the guidance of a mentor to observe, to record, and to share, which can reinforce their understanding of what has been learned on different environmental issues. Through Micro-movie production, students (at any grade with interests in environmental protection) would apply what they have learned during the lecture or laboratory section and turn that knowledge and theories into practice. This competition is carried out between October 2020 and March 31, 2021. To date, there are ten groups registered to participate this competition.
- OCEESA has launched the membership promotion program to increase cultural diversity.
To celebrate 40 years of the fulfillment of the vision and mission of OCEESA in providing education, training, and information exchange for members and other environmental professionals, OCEESA has launched a membership promotion program since October 2020. OCEESA invites the current student to join the OCEESA for a free and interested party to join OCEESA as a Life Member at a discounted membership fee of US$100.00 (one-time membership due until December 31, 2021). By the end of January 2021, there have been ten new life members joined OCEESA family.
- OCEESA has revised the OCEESA Constitution and By-laws to improve the operational efficiency in the society
OCEESA has not reviewed the Constitution and By-laws for the past 40 years. The Constitution and By-Laws Committee (Anmin Liu serves as a chairperson to lead this committee including John Huang, Yung-Sung Cheng, Ning-Wu Chang, Jason Wen, Kuo-Kuang Hsu, Pao-Chiang Yuan, and Jy-Shing Wu) had put a great deal of effort into this challenging task. The principles of this revision included: (1)The amendments shall improve the operational efficiency now and also be applicable in the future. (2)Ensure the consistency of statements between the Constitution and the By-Laws. (3)Make all statements to be in absolute clarity. The revision of the OCEESA Constitution and By-laws was passed in the OCESSA 2020 general membership meeting which was held on January 15, 2021. Twenty-seven active members attended this meeting.
- OCEESA has started the fundraising program to reach a self-sustainable association
OCEESA has launched a fundraising program since October 2020 to cover the expenses of many activities during the year. Around USD 9,000 has been received from several generous donors.
Other related activities:
- Chinese Institute of Engineers – USA (CIE-USA) Spring National Meeting, was held on May 31, 2020, through the Zoom meeting. Jinghui Niu(牛景輝) did an excellent job to present the OCEESA 2020’s report.
- AAEOY (Asian American Engineer of the Year) 2020 was scheduled for November 6, 2020; this meeting has been postponed to May 22-23, 2021 in the format of virtual event. Thus, the AAEOY 2021, which will be co-hosted by Southern California Chapter and OCEESA, will be postponed to 2022. Volunteers are needed for this 2022 AAEOY event.
- The 2020 Modern Engineering and Technology Seminars (METS) was scheduled to be held in Taipei on October 25-27, 2020. This meeting has been canceled. However, the final report has been compiled with the abstract of each speaker. The 2022 METS has started planning the format and topics.
- The 2020 SATEC (Sino-American Technology and Engineering Conference) was scheduled to be held in Beijing, on May 24-31, 2020. This meeting has been postponed to 2021.
- The 20th MTEPC has been postponed to 2021 in Taipei. Taipei University of Technology, Taipei, Taiwan (臺北科技大學), will host this meeting. OCEESA also would like to take this meeting opportunity to celebrate the OCEESA’s 40th Dr. Ning-Wu Chang was appointed as the OCEESA’s coordinator to have better communication with the MTEPC committee.
Thank you for your supports in 2020.
Wei-Ping Pan
OCEESA 2020 President
January 31, 2021