News & Stories

Wastewater treatment is a critical issue for global environmental protection and public health. Researchers from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have recently achieved a major breakthrough by discovering a novel oxidant-free electrocatalytic mechanism, opening up a new direction for water purification technologies. The findings are set to significantly improve pollutant identification efficiency and potentially double the economic feasibility compared with existing methods.

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.

Anticancer prodrugs have attracted significant attention from the medical and scientific communities in recent years due to their potential to improve treatment precision while reducing adverse side effects. These drugs are specially engineered to remain inactive until they are activated at specific sites or under particular physiological conditions within the body, at which point they release their therapeutic effect. This targeted approach helps minimize damage to healthy tissues that often occurs when conventional chemotherapy agents attack cancer cells, addressing the longstanding challenge of collateral toxicity in cancer treatment.However, achieving precise drug activation within the body's highly complex biological environment remains a considerable challenge. Existing chemical strategies and activation technologies continue to face a number of technical limitations and obstacles, highlighting the need for further innovation in this field.

Reaching for the Moon is exactly how the School of Engineering AI robotics expert has spent her career. Now she is helping to launch the University and Hong Kong as an international hub for pioneering space robotics and mission development.

Researchers from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have developed a novel chip architecture that enables the miniature acoustic devices inside smartphones to withstand over 12 times higher power loads while maintaining cooler and more stable operation. Tested on transducers vibrating more than two billion times per second, the new platform – named "Layered Acoustic Wave" (LAW) – reduced the operating temperature rise by 70% and set a record threshold power density of 36.4 W/mm². The breakthrough lifts a decades-old restriction that confined acoustic chips to small-signal processing, paving the way for a new generation of applications from direct-to-cell satellite communications and 6G networks to compact power conversion.

Solar cells' efficiency and lifespan are often determined by what happens at interfaces — the microscopic boundaries where different materials meet. Researchers from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have contributed to two recently published studies that show molecular interface engineering can unlock major gains in the efficiency and durability of next-generation perovskite tandem solar cells.The two studies, published in academic journals Joule (impact factor: 37.1) and Nature Communications, focus on different tandem architectures but convey one common message: carefully designed molecular layers can do far more than connect materials. They can guide how perovskite films crystallize, suppress energy-wasting defects, promote charge transport and protect solar cells against degradation.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has launched the new WavyOcean Digital Twin Earth System Version 3.0, making its online platform available to the public for the first time. Built around the concept of "Taohai" – a Chinese term meaning "searching or discovering from the sea", the platform transforms ocean data from research-focused resources into shared knowledge accessible to all.By enhancing the visibility and interpretability of marine ecosystems, the platform promotes deeper public understanding of the ocean and encourages informed actions to support marine conservation and safeguard valuable marine ecosystems.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has distinguished itself in the 2026/2027 Strategic Topics Grant (STG) of the Research Grants Council (RGC) under the University Grants Committee. Of the six approved projects, two are led by HKUST scholars, collectively receiving more than HKD 54.41 million in funding (including matching fund from the University). This represents the highest total funding amount among local universities. The projects leverage artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare to enhance the management of bacterial infections in older adults and provide integrated management for Parkinson's disease, underscoring HKUST's leadership in cutting-edge research and its commitment to developing innovative solutions to the healthcare challenges posed by the aging global population.