News & Stories

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) is launching a transformative new degree program in Integrative Systems and Design (ISD), which will revolutionize traditional teaching method as students will study systems design not through fixed curriculum, but project-based learning in teams where the “what” and “how” to learn are individualized.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) is enhancing the Department of Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management (IELM) by introducing decision analytics into its curriculum, opening a new spectrum of job opportunities to the students and allowing them to tackle traditional industries with new vision and knowhow. IELM will be renamed the Department of Industrial Engineering and Decision Analytics (IEDA) to reflect its growing portfolio of teaching and research in decision analytics – a relatively new domain which involves extensive analysis of data using statistical models, machine learning algorithms, simulation, creative modeling and prescriptive analytic tools for making wise decisions for various problems in modern society.

According to Professor Brian Mak, Associate Professor in HKUST’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering, a recent survey indicated that Hong Kong is home to around 50,000 people who are either totally deaf or are hearing-impaired. However, the kind of support this community requires is not currently available. “The number of professional sign language interpreters [in Hong Kong] is low – only about 54 in total,” Professor Mak explained. For their final year project, three Computer Science and Engineering undergraduates decided to use the skills they had developed at HKUST to tackle this problem. The app developed by Ken Ka-wai Lai, Mary Ming-fong Leung and Kelvin Wai-chiu Yung translates Chinese sentences keyed into a phone into video sequences illustrating how to sign the words.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and leading genomics organization BGI Group will establish a joint research center that will set the stage for the next-generation sequencing platform and research efforts that produce novel medical diagnosis and treatments with transformative impact. Witnessed by HKUST President Prof Tony F Chan and BGI Group President and Co-founder Prof Wang Jian, the memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed by Prof Nancy Ip, HKUST Vice-President for Research and Graduate Studies and Mr Duncan Yu, BGI Group Vice President at the ceremony held on 27 July. The MoU underlines the commitment of establishing a HKUST-BGI Joint Research Center. The center aims to promote mutually beneficial cooperation in biotechnological science and engineering, and benefit mankind by solving problems in areas such as healthcare, conservation and environment.

If you’ve ever struggled with trying to pick up tofu with chopsticks, think how difficult it must be for the steely grip of a mechanical robot.  But thanks to some great teamwork and a lot of persistence, that’s exactly the challenge recently solved by five Mechanical Engineering students at HKUST, an achievement that has won them the 2017 President’s Cup for excellence in research and innovation. The team’s ‘Smart Soft-End Effector’ is a flexible robotic gripper that can safely handle the most delicate items, offering strong potential for commercial development.  The idea was initiated in 2015 by Alex Tse Yu, a final year engineering student, who has long been interested in soft robotics and created a prototype.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) hosted the last round of its Distinguished Speakers Series today - a talk series launched over a year ago to celebrate the University’s 25th anniversary. Prof Hiroshi Amano, a renowned physicist and engineer in semiconductor technology, marked the 9th Nobel laureate and the 27th who spoke for the series hosted by corporate leaders, entrepreneurs and key financial policy shapers around the world.

Determined to close the gap between current and environmentally sustainable practices, Karen Leong, 2016 graduate of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, has been rewarded with a prestigious international engineering prize. Karen is the first Hong Kong recipient—and one of the few female recipients in a 62-year history—of the annual Arthur L Williston Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Her winning submission was a paper entitled “Fuel Choice Regulation—The Way to Narrow the Gap Between Current IMO Marine Standard and 2025 Greenhouse Gas Emission Target”.

Researchers from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have developed an intelligent hearing aid which not only allows users to adjust the clarity of selected sound sources, but is also much more affordable at just one tenth the price of similar products in the market. Developed by Prof Richard So from the Department of Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management and his student Calvin Zhang, fresh graduate of MPhil Program in Technology Leadership and Entrepreneurship (TLE), the novel audio technology not only promises to improve life for the elderly and the hearing-impaired, but will also enhance the audio quality of hearing protection equipment and communication devices such as mobile phones and walkie-talkies, as well as the accuracy of voice recognition devices.