News & Stories

2017 Winter International Technology & Management Business Plan Competition on "Health Tech for Seniors" was hosted by HKUST in January 2017. 34 students from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA), University of Bayreuth (Germany), and University of Sao Paulo (Brazil) flew to Hong Kong to join 14 students of HKUST Dual Degree Program in Technology & Management and form mixed teams in competing for the best business plan in health-tech services and products for seniors.

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.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) hosted the 25th Anniversary Distinguished Speakers Series today featuring Mr Jay Nibbe, Global Vice Chair – Tax of leading assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services network EY.  The event was well received by students, faculty members and guests from HKUST. In his talk entitled “Disruption in business: what forces will shape our careers in the coming years?”, Mr Nibbe presented an overview on how disruptive forces such as technology and globalization will shape our careers and lives in the coming years. “Technology is dramatically affecting entire industries,” Mr Nibbe said in his speech.  “Globalization has accelerated trade liberalization and emerging market growth, and demographic shifts through migration, immigration and increased urbanization are having profound effects on workforces and economic development.  Disruption is fundamentally changing the way the world works.”

Augmented Reality (AR) is the next big thing for mobile devices. Researchers at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) are on course of building a novel AR platform for mobile devices, in efforts to facilitate an ecosystem for entrepreneurs and programmers to develop AR programs and applications on mobile and wearable devices. Prof Pan Hui, Director of HKUST-DT System and Media Lab (SyMLab), said the lab resolved to a bottom-up approach in its research to facilitate the development of AR applications on mobile and wearable devices. “We sought to identify and develop major AR components including hardware platforms, software frameworks and display devices, then we enable technologies such as object tracking and process offloading to significantly accelerate the development cycle,” he said.

Sleep plays a vital role in good health and well-being. There are several factors that could affect the quality of your sleep. Among all, snoring can affect the quality of your sleep and that of your family members and roommates. A HKUST professor recently invented an adjustable pillow to monitor sleep quality, helping people sleep well without interruptions. According to Professor Zhang Qian, Tencent Professor of Engineering and Chair Professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at HKUST, snoring could indicate sleep apnea. More than 3,000 people worldwide die of sleep apnea-related issues every day. More than 90% of people who snore have breathing issues at night and could develop sleep apnea, which is a sleep disorder in which a person has one or more pauses in breathing or shallow breathing while asleep.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) hosted the 25th Anniversary Distinguished Speakers Series today, featuring Dr Eric Betzig, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2014.  The event was well received by students, faculty members and guests from HKUST. In his talk titled “Imaging Life at High Spatiotemporal Resolution”, Dr Betzig told the audience the latest development of microscopy, he said, “As our understanding of biological systems has increased, so have the complexity of our questions and the need for more advanced optical tools to answer them.” He added that there was a hundred-fold gap between the resolution of conventional optical microscopy and the scale at which molecules self-assemble to form sub-cellular structures.

What would happen to our lives if robots could read our emotions and act like a friend?  It may sound like some plots in science fiction movies, but Prof Pascale Fung from the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has realized this dream.  An expert in intelligent systems that understand and empathize with humans, Prof Fung’s latest project “Zara the Supergirl” is a prototype machine capable of chatting with humans in both English and Mandarin, it is expected to chat in more languages including French in the future.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and UC RUSAL (SEHK: 486, Euronext: RUSAL/RUAL, Moscow Exchange: RUAL/RUALR), a leading global aluminum producer, announce that Prof Dan Shechtman, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 2011 and Philip Tobias Professor of Materials Science, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, spoke at UC RUSAL President’s Forum and HKUST 25th Anniversary Distinguished Speakers Series. The Forum marked the completion of the five-year partnership between HKUST and UC RUSAL and was well attended by students, faculty members and guests from HKUST & outside the university.