News & Stories

Don and Kelvin co-founded AQUMON in 2015 with the vision of democratizing financial services. In 2015, when Dr. Don HUANG was still teaching financial engineering at HKUST, he received a call from his former bank colleague Kelvin LEI, asking whether he would be interested in starting a business with him. The answer was an instant “Yes!” “Kelvin told me his vision of democratizing wealth management so that more people could enjoy better services. It wasn’t easy for the algorithms and financial modeling involved, but I immediately felt it was a great opportunity,” says the HKUST alumnus. 

Patrick TU and Alex CHU, alumni of the BBA program and co-founders of Dayta AI, are selected for the Forbes 30 under 30 Asia list under the Retail and E-commerce industry.  

Four HKUST students brew craft beer from waste bread to save the world.

Chemical and Biological Engineering alumna Vanessa Ho Po-Ki (right, first row), Prof. Marshal Liu (left, first row), and three BEng fresh graduates (from left, second row) Andy Choy Man-Hin, Isaac Kwan Chi-Shing, and Michael Lui Wing-Piu, join hands to achieve product commercialization of an idea that originated in a course project.

With so many in-person conferences and trade shows being canceled or moved online due to COVID-19, countless entrepreneurs including Justin CHAN, co-founder and CEO of biotech startup Gense Technologies, specializing in wearable wristband for hand gesture recognition, are forced to make pitches to investors, partners, and customers virtually to help their companies grow. Unfortunately, most of them are clueless about how to make a great first impression in online meetings, so HKUST’s Office of Knowledge Transfer and Entrepreneurship Center stepped in to help them develop relevant skills.

Benedict YUEN, our BBA Marketing 2012 graduate, is instantly recognizable in Hong Kong from his work as a TV anchor and a KOL (key opinion leader) on social media. This is all on top of having a talent and production company and hosting his own travel TV show, where he went everywhere from Russia to South Africa, in addition to starting his catering businesses.

Fion LEUNG, a 2010 business administration graduate at HKUST, knew she would not want a long-term career in the financial sector while she was working as an analyst at a global investment bank. Rather, getting more people into volunteering and nurturing children and young people gave her much more satisfaction than advancing her coveted career. She soon branched out and pursued entrepreneurship based around what she thought was meaningful, and sought greater exposure and ideas together with her friend WONG Suet-Yi. While attending networking events to make useful contacts and more friends on the same wavelength, both young ladies felt awkward about approaching industry leaders. And they realized that their feelings were common, like her peers, being fresh out of college and also desperate to build a career but having no mentors they could ask for advice.

Kachin WONG aspired to study Medicine while at secondary school, but his less-than-expected public examination results shattered his dream. The great disappointment, however, turned out to be a blessing in disguise. He was admitted to HKUST to study biochemistry and cell biology and went on to complete an MPhil program in Technology Leadership and Entrepreneurship (TLE) this year. During his postgraduate studies, he came across a paper by Prof. SUN Fei of Chemical and Biological Engineering (CBE) about smart hydrogels. Hydrogels, also known as soft matter in the medical world, are leading materials for biomedical applications such as drug delivery and stem cell therapy.