News & Stories

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) today held its orientation carnival, "Fire Up Your Year," today (September 1). Coinciding with the University's 35th anniversary, the event themed "Where Miracles Happen," brought together President Prof. Nancy IP, members of the University leadership, faculty, staff, and alumni to warmly welcome more than 8,000 new undergraduate and postgraduate students from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Chinese Mainland, and around the world to the HKUST community as they embark on an exciting new chapter in their academic journey.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) nurtured startups showcased their innovations at the HICOOL 2026 Global Entrepreneur Summit and Entrepreneurship Competition and seized four prestigious accolades: the Overseas Group Championship, First Prize, Second Prize, and Third Prize. This achievement not only underscores HKUST's strong capabilities in deep-tech and cutting-edge innovation but also highlights the immense commercialization potential of its research breakthroughs to a global audience of industry leaders and investors. It further reinforces the University's leadership in innovation and technology, leveraging research excellence to accelerate industry advancement and generate meaningful societal impact.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a key driver of a new wave of scientific and technological innovation that is transforming industries, reshaping the way humans work at an unprecedented pace. As outlined in the Chief Executive's 2025 Policy Address, Hong Kong is actively advancing "AI+" development through the acceleration of AI industrialization, the wider adoption of AI across industries, and its deeper integration of AI into various sectors. These initiatives are designed to strengthen Hong Kong’s position as a global hub for AI innovation. Against this backdrop, developing AI-ready talent has become a crucial priority for enhancing the city's long-term competitiveness.

A research team from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has developed a novel AI framework, the Generalist–Specialist Collaboration (GSCo), which enables a generalist foundation model and specialist models to collaborate on disease diagnosis. GSCo outperforms both standalone models in tasks such as medical imaging, visual question answering, and radiology report generation, while significantly reducing development costs of medical models to adapt to new clinical tasks. This marks a meaningful step toward bringing AI medical models into everyday clinical workflows. The study, titled "Towards generalizable AI in medicine via Generalist–Specialist Collaboration," was published in the prestigious academic journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has achieved notable achievements in the Research Grants Council's (RGC) Senior Research Fellow Scheme (SRFS) and Research Fellow Scheme (RFS) for the 2026/27 exercise, with three distinguished scholars receiving the fellowship awards. The honors recognize their pioneering research in frontier fields, including electrosynthesis, quantum materials, and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), as well as their exceptional contributions to driving impactful scientific breakthroughs and advancing the frontiers of knowledge.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia have signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to reinforce the implementation of an Indonesian government-funded scholarship framework aimed at cultivating top-tier future talent. A cornerstone of this collaboration is the integration of Indonesia’s newly launched Garuda Scholarship to support more outstanding students pursuing undergraduate studies at HKUST. Building on the cooperation agreement established in May 2024, the new MoU solidifies the formal scholarship framework while paving the way for both parties to explore further synergistic opportunities in student internships, academic exchanges, and joint research initiatives to drive innovation in higher education.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) recently inaugurated its Blue Bay Qianhai Innovation Center (the Center), marking a significant strategic step in strengthening the University’s presence in Qianhai, deepening Shenzhen-Hong Kong collaboration, and expanding its global innovation footprint.The launch of the Center represents the latest milestone in the development of HKUST’s Blue Bay innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem in Shenzhen. Since establishing the HKUST Blue Bay Incubator and its first base in Nanshan in 2016, HKUST has steadily expanded its innovation footprint in the city, adding a second base in the Hetao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone in 2020 and now a third strategic base in Qianhai. Together, the three bases form an integrated platform that supports technology transfer, startup incubation, entrepreneurship, and cross-border innovation collaboration between Hong Kong and Shenzhen.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and a consortium of leading French corporations today signed a works contract and a second-phase Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). Welcomed by Invest Hong Kong (InvestHK), the two agreements mark a significant step forward and turn the low-carbon retrofit partnership established in September 2025 into concrete action.