News & Stories

In Hong Kong, 1 in 6 couples struggles to get pregnant, compared to 1 in 10 two decades ago. In China, the infertility rate has risen to 12-15% from just 2.5% in the early 1990s. Many couples have begun to seek medical help to fulfil their desire to have a baby – there are 50 million patients with fertility problems in China. Listening to Dr. SHU Yiwei Ervin, current student of MPhil Program in Technology Leadership and Entrepreneurship (TLE) offered by the Division of Integrative Systems and Design of HKUST's School of Engineering, talk about the pain involved in the in-vitro fertilization (IVF) process, and his hope that his startup can eventually increase the success rate of the procedure, is both moving and inspiring. 

Researchers of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Science recently identified that an enzyme called atlastin (ATL) is used to regulate the transportation of proteins within cells. This novel finding offers new insights into the pathology of Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia – a rare inherited disorder with symptoms of lower limb spasticity accompanied by possible neurological deficiencies. 

Humans are creatures who often judge whether a dish is attractive or a stranger is friendly simply by their own eyes. But our sense of smell is just as important. We all may have the experience of eating with a stuffy nose and found a dish to be tasteless or using our nose to check whether it has gone bad. Moreover, people tend to keep their distance from a person with an unpleasant odor, while special odors like gas can alert us to dangers of a leak. As the old Chinese adage goes, "My shack is better than an emperor's bed." What makes our own shack better? Our smell, together with the smell of our family members, and pets as well if any, makes it unique and reassuring. To understand how smell impacts people, researchers at the University of British Columbia, Canada, invited 96 couples for a study last year.

HKUST Institute for the Environment today launched a new mobile app that aims to help users reduce their exposure to outdoor air pollution. PRAISE-HK stands for “Personalized Real-time Air-quality Informatics System for Exposure – Hong Kong” and will help build Hong Kong into a world-class smart and healthy city. Funded by HSBC 150th Anniversary Charity Program, PRAISE-HK is a five-year project commenced in November 2016, and covers three major release milestones for the mobile app and the system:

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and Xunlei Limited (Xunlei or the Company) today announced the establishment of HKUST-Xunlei Joint Laboratory on Blockchain Technology (the Joint Lab). The Joint Lab aims to develop cutting-edge and influential blockchain technologies that are applicable to various industries and establish a high-performance blockchain ecosystem in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. A signing ceremony was held on HKUST campus, marking the official launch of the Joint Lab and research collaboration. Prof. Tim CHENG, Dean of Engineering of HKUST, and Ms. LAI Xin, the Chief Engineer of ThunderChain at Xunlei, signed the collaborative agreement as witnessed by Prof. Nancy IP, Vice-President for Research and Development of HKUST, and Mr. CHEN Lei, Chief Executive Officer of Xunlei and Onething Technologies.

An international and multidisciplinary research team led by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) was recently granted a research fund of HK$91.85 million by the University Grants Committee (UGC). Under the leadership of Prof. Charles NG Wang-Wai (HKUST Associate Vice-President for Research and Development and CLP Holdings Professor of Sustainability), this project will deliver a comprehensive extreme weather and landslide warning system. This novel system will increase the forecast lead time of heavy rainfall from three to six hours, thereby giving the general public and responders more time to prepare for potential disasters.  

Getting a divorce is hard, but going through paperwork and court proceedings can leave a deeper scar. A team of HKUST’s Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) students, supervised by professors and alumnus, has developed a “robo-lawyer” that not only saves time and money, but also paves the way for wider application of artificial intelligence technologies in the legal profession. Hong Kong’s divorce rate in 2016 was more than double that in 1991. The rising demand for family mediation has been a mounting challenge for Albert SO, a CSE alumnus from HKUST, who chairs the Hong Kong Mediation and Arbitration Centre. Few divorcing couples actually realized that the high legal costs and procedural drag would take an emotional toll on themselves, says Albert. Many of them are unwilling or unable to sit down for a mediation that could take months or years, especially for cross-border couples.

By Prof. Ning Zhi, Associate Professor of Environment and Sustainability Marine emissions account for 40 percent of air pollution sources in Hong Kong - making them one of the city's most significant pollutant sources. Given the SAR's status as one of the busiest ports in the world, enforcing clean fuel laws is absolutely essential in our quest to clean up our air. Traditionally, policing high sulfur fuel usage is a time-consuming affair: checking ship logs, collecting samples from fuel tanks, taking them back to the lab and then conducting analyses. This process takes days and even weeks. By the time these measurements are complete, the ships are likely to be already far from Hong Kong. Regulators have been looking for a more efficient solution to detect and screen the vessels violating the fuel sulfur cap regulations.