News & Stories

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.

Prof. Mohamed Salah GHIDAOUI, Chinese Estates Professor of Engineering and Chair Professor of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), his international collaborators, and students have been awarded the Creativity Prize at the 12th Award of the PSIPW for their pioneering research in time reversal of waves and its successful translation into a novel diagnostic technology for pressurized water pipe networks. This “Creativity Prize,” valued at US$266,000, is widely recognized as one of the most prestigious honors in water engineering and science. The United Nations (UN) headquarters in Vienna served as the venue for the public announcement of the PSIPW awards in June 2026, during the water session of the 69th Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). This same venue will also host the award presentation ceremony later this year.

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.

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.

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.