News & Stories

Prof Ricky Shi-wei Lee, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Director of Center for Advanced Microsystems Packaging (CAMP) at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) was selected as the winner of the 2014 Calvin W Rice Lecture Award by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for his contribution to the mechanical engineering society across the world.  Prof Lee is the first scholar in Hong Kong to have won this prestigious award.  Prof Lee will deliver the Calvin W Rice Lecture at the annual ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition Conference (IMECE) which is to be held in Montreal, Canada in November 2014.

As we all know, proteins are essential to all living organisms including human beings. Most of the enzymes are made of proteins, and there are countless enzymes on earth that function as catalysts, playing an important role in speeding up biological reactions in living cells. We simply cannot live without enzymes. Recently, a team of scientists at the IAS HKUST-Scripps R&D Laboratory has discovered 250 new proteins with previously unidentified activities. The research was led by Prof Paul Schimmel, the Ernest and Jean Hahn Professor of Molecular Biology and Chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute (California and Florida) and a visiting professor of the IAS. Detailed findings were published in Science in July.

The team “EnerBy” from HKUST won the energy management company Schneider Electric’s Global Business Case Challenge “Go Green in the City 2014” that was held in Paris from 17-21 June 2014. The winning team, which comprises of Keith Chan Jin-Deng and Jasmine Lee Man-Ki, students of BSc in Environmental Management and Technology program at HKUST, beat over 10,000 students from all over the world with their business case Energy Forecast Program. The program integrates smart plugs to allow smart metering through a mobile application. The HKUST students’ entry is a mobile application that bills customers before using electricity, allowing people to efficiently monitor and manage their use of energy consumption.

Jasmine Lee BSc in Environmental Management and Technology I feel very thankful to be part of the EVMT family. EVMT, or Environmental Management and Technology, is a new program under the Interdisciplinary Program Office. Three years ago, I entered the program fuelled by a passion to learn to tackle environmental issues through new approaches, such as green business, education and environmental policies. Out of all the programs at HKUST, EVMT is probably the one that enrolls the fewest number of students a year; because of that, we were closely knit – like a family.

BAI, Site Dual Degree Program, BEng in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management and BBA in General Business Management (IEGBM) The idea of the Ride Sharing Program came to me a year ago. A UST resident and I were talking about the lengthy queues for public transport from campus; often, students are frustrated by the long wait for buses leaving UST, especially during peak hours, while professors and staff drive nearly empty cars out of campus each day. Then it dawned on us – what if UST drivers opened up their rides to other community members? This would alleviate the high demand for public transport while reducing the amount of energy consumed by private cars, making our community more sustainable.

Professor Irene Lo of Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has been elected as an Academician (Technical and Environmental Sciences) of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (EASA). She is the first Hong Kong scholar inducted into the EASA. Based in Salzburg, Austria, the EASA is an interdisciplinary network of scholars from various fields focusing on scientific, social, cultural and ethical issues. The Academy’s seven branches include humanities, medicine, arts, natural sciences, social sciences/law and economics, technical and environmental sciences, and world religions. As of today, it has more than 1,500 members, including 29 Nobel Laureates.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) signed a memorandum with Guangdong University of Technology (GDUT) today to map out the details of co-hosting the “National Challenge Cup” – a competition branded as the Olympiad of Science and Technology for university students. It is the first time for a local university to co-host the event in the Cup’s 25 years of history.The biennial "National Challenge Cup" is a mega contest in academic and technological innovation for university students in China. Since Tsinghua University first hosted the event, it has turned into an iconic competition on science and innovation with its scale growing from a few hundred participants out of 19 institutes, to nearly 7,000 students from over 400 universities. Winners included a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, nearly 10 heads of state key laboratories and over 220 professors and doctoral advisors.

Synix Siwen SUN BSc in Risk Management and Business Intelligence, Class of 2016 Stacy Kaihong HE BSc in Environmental Management and Technology, Class of 2016 Rax Chin Wong LAU BSc in Environmental Management and Technology, Class of 2016 To support eco-friendly waste disposal, I helped to organize a campaign to encourage HKUST student societies to recycle their banners and decorations this year.  The aim was to motivate the societies to make better use of promotional materials provided by the University rather than just throwing them away after use. Having observed the amount of waste produced in previous student activities, we definitely saw the need for improvement.  The idea was conceived by a member of our organizing committee who took part in a School of Business and Management group project. Our campaign was divided into three stages: