HKUST and Alibaba Cloud’s Talent Development and Research Collaboration Enters New Phase | The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and Alibaba Cloud today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to further their collaboration in nurturing local technology talent, collaborating on cutting-edge technology research and facilitating the research works of HKUST researchers. 

Under the MoU, HKUST and Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group and global leader in cloud technologies, will nurture local talent in knowledge relating to data analytics, cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) to contribute to Hong Kong’s pool of technology professionals and meet industry demands.

The two parties will implement joint talent development programs, providing workshops and seminars to equip students with the practical skills needed to use advanced technologies as well as promote a culture centered around new technology innovations. Internship opportunities will also be offered to HKUST students by Alibaba Cloud. 

This partnership aims to support HKUST to move forward as an international leader in education and research. Drawing on its robust cloud experience, Alibaba Cloud will continue supporting HKUST to explore Elastic High-Performance Computing (E-HPC) for accelerating HKUST’s research activities in pure science and engineering, as well as AI and machine learning. Alibaba Cloud will also provide advisory for HKUST to build an integrated, secure and flexible research platform connecting its campus in Hong Kong and the soon-to-be-opened Guangzhou campus.

Prof. Tim CHENG, Vice-President for Research and Development at HKUST spoke at the ceremony today, “Alibaba Group is an active supporter of pioneering research and academic-industry cooperation. Since 2018, both parties have jointly launched 10 collaborative research projects to advance the frontiers of innovative technologies and address challenges of the industry. We are excited to strengthen this partnership with Alibaba Cloud, to pave way for an even closer collaboration, which shall bring greater benefits not just for us, but for the society and region as a whole.”

Leo LIU, General Manager for Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, and Philippines, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence said: “The partnership with HKUST is an affirmation of our commitment to nurturing technology talent and fostering local innovation ecosystems. HKUST is a leading university with world-class research across disciplines. We’re delighted to work with our partner to continuously prepare young talent for the future. We look forward to co-developing more advanced technologies to empower various industries and advance the GBA as a technology hub in Asia.”

Through this collaboration, HKUST and Alibaba Cloud will also work together to explore new solutions in areas such as AI, next generation intelligent data processing platforms and serverless computing, in view of addressing technology-related challenges and opening up fresh opportunities for academic and industry experts to cooperate on projects.

HKUST and Alibaba Cloud are long-term collaborators. Supported by Alibaba Cloud and the Alibaba Innovative Research (AIR) Program, the two parties have worked together on research projects spanning machine intelligence and data computing. Supported by Alibaba Cloud, HKUST organized a FinTech hackathon to encourage its students to identify and solve industry challenges and develop innovation solutions.

About The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) (https://hkust.edu.hk/zh-hant) is a world-class research intensive university that focuses on science, technology and business as well as humanities and social science. HKUST offers an international campus, and a holistic and interdisciplinary pedagogy to nurture well-rounded graduates with global vision, a strong entrepreneurial spirit and innovative thinking. Over 80% of our research work were rated “Internationally excellent” or “world leading” in the Research Assessment Exercise 2020 of Hong Kong’s University Grants Committee. We were ranked 3rd in Times Higher Education’s Young University Rankings 2022, and our graduates were ranked 23rd worldwide and among the best from universities from  Asia in Global University Employability Survey 2021.

About Alibaba Cloud 
Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud (https://hk.alibabacloud.com/) is the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group. It offers a complete suite of cloud services to customers worldwide, including elastic computing, database, storage, network virtualization services, large-scale computing, security, management and application services, big data analytics, a machine learning platform and IoT services. Alibaba maintained its position as the third leading public cloud IaaS service provider globally since 2018, according to IDC. Alibaba is the world’s third leading and Asia Pacific’s leading IaaS provider by revenue in U.S. dollars since 2018, according to Gartner.