News & Stories

Mechanical engineering student soars to round 2 of Airbus Fly Your Ideas 2019.

Prof. Rhea Liem, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering The "Made in China 2025" initiative - first announced in 2015 to close the gap between the Chinese and Western technological prowess - was not mentioned at the opening session of the National People's Congress this month. Critics say the omission was to appease Washington amid turbulent Sino-US trade negotiations. Politics aside, as the 2025 timeframe is about halfway through, are the goals - with one key focus being making its jetliners to take up to 20 percent of the global market - still achievable? A few months back, the C919 of Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, or Comac, landed safely in Shanghai, showcasing China's upgraded aircraft-manufacturing capabilities. Expected to commercially operate in 2021, C919 is a narrow-body twinjet airliner that is the equivalent of the Airbus 320 and the Boeing 737.

Prof. Jin Qi, Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering & Decision Analytics Freshly announced in the budget three weeks ago, a new HK$10 billion stabilization fund has been earmarked to soothe Hong Kong’s manpower-starved public medical sector. While we welcome the initiative, we can’t help but wonder – if public hospitals are currently short-staffed and new blood requires training time – how we can cope with swamped outpatient clinics during future peak flu seasons? Media reports last month indicated that every public ward exceeded capacity, with some patients queuing for over eight hours to see a doctor. The inpatient bed occupancy rates of every hospital, aside from North Lantau and Tin Shui Wai hospitals, exceeded 100 percent almost on a daily basis. Scarce resources require carefully planned policies to ensure optimal bed allocation and quality services.

Professor King Chow, Director of Interdisciplinary Programs Office A study on boys' and girls' ability in mathematics has placed a centuries-old argument in the spotlight: are men and women created equal, and do they perform equally in math-related subjects? The recent study, conducted by scientists at the University of Rochester and the University of Pittsburgh in the United States, examined cross-sectional gender differences in mathematical cognition from more than 500 children aged between six months and eight years old, focusing on numerosity perception, culturally trained counting, and formal and informal elementary mathematics concepts. To the surprise of many, the study - published in Nature Partner Journal of Science of Learning - found no difference between boys and girls in early quantitative and mathematical ability, which means that boys and girls are indeed created equal to reason about mathematics.

Prof. Jane Zhang, Assistant Professor, Division of Social Science As we all know, International Women's Day aims to raise awareness about the struggles of women the world over and to honor their achievements. While we are still fighting hard for equal pay for women and more female representation at executive levels, we often overlook the role that gender norms - standards and expectations to which women and men generally conform - play in obstructing women from realizing their potential. Instilled and internalized early in life, gender norms can establish expectations that limit what women can or should do. Experimental research has shown that women are less willing to compete than men, leading young women to choose less lucrative areas of specialization in school; women are also less likely to negotiate their job offers.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) held its annual Long Service Award Presentation Ceremony today to honor faculty and staff members who have served the University for at least 20 years. HKUST also conferred its first 30 years’ service award this year.  Despite a history of just 28 years, dozens of administrative staff spanning across areas including finance, human resources, facilities management, public affairs and library, among others, have begun preparatory work for the campus as early as 1989.   HKUST established the Long Service Award to express appreciation to and recognition for long-serving faculty and staff members.  It was also meant to foster a sense of belonging for the HKUST community. There were a total of 43 awardees this year: 28 with 30 years of service and 15 of 20 years.

Have you ever struggled to catch a minibus to or from campus? It’s why a new “Finding Mini” app has been developed by HKUST alumni Jason Yuen, Simon Tsang, and current student Gash Tsui. “We deploy GPS module on each minibus, and sophisticated data algorithms developed by ourselves, with factors including weather, fluctuations of traffic, and real-time traffic conditions,” says Simon. While KMB buses already had an app for arrival times, the green minibuses did not. “We were very frustrated by this situation, because we could not compare arrival times between the double decker and minibus arrival times in Choi Hung, and the stops are on different ends of the street,” says Jason.

Scientists from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have recently uncovered the mechanisms of how RNA polymerase II performs intrinsic cleavage reaction to proofread RNA transcriptions, shedding light on how mis-regulation of accurate transcription can lead to diseases including cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. The message of life is encoded in our genomic DNA through transcription of messenger RNAs and translation of proteins to perform cellular functions. To ensure accurate transcription – a process that transcribes genomic DNA into messenger RNA by adding nucleotides one by one like letters in the alphabet, an enzyme called RNA polymerase II would synthesize and proofread messenger RNA to remove any mis-incorporated nucleotides that do not match with the DNA template.