News & Stories

It's not common that respected academics reveal their personal struggles, especially to their colleagues, students and even strangers. Prof. Paul FORSTER from the Department of Management and Division of Environment and Sustainability, who has recently been awarded IPO (Interdisciplinary Programs Office) Teaching Excellence Award for the postgraduate category, has decided to disclose his decades-long battle with depression, in the hope of breaking the mental health stigma and encouraging people to seek help for mental health problems.

Students attending the classes of Prof. Julian GROVES of the Division of Social Science understand that switching off and putting away their electronic devices is mandatory—even the use of laptops or tablets for note-taking are discouraged—because Prof. Groves reckons that while the internet can be an important resource for educators, “mobile devices can be a terrible distraction to classroom learning”. The students might not like it at first, but they rarely complain about it because they are offered “something equally compelling in return” which involves many interactive activities such as surveys, quizzes, simulations, and discussions to keep them engaged.

The School of Business and Management of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST Business School) has unveiled a series of activities for students and the industry to show its full support for Hong Kong Fintech Week which started today. As a satellite event of the InvestHK’s Fintech Week, the School partnered with the Fintech Association of Hong Kong to present an industry panel on November 1. The event entitled: “Bank 4.0 and the Future of Financial Services” featured five experts in the field to discuss the latest technological advancements and their impacts on the world of banking and financial services. Held at HKUST Business Central, the event attracted an audience of over one hundred alumni and industry practitioners. 

November 1, 2019, Hong Kong –– Microsoft Hong Kong and The School of Business and Management of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST Business School) introduced today Hong Kong’s first MBA elective featuring an AI (Artificial Intelligence) curriculum. The enhanced curriculum will equip business leaders and organizations with the critical skills, knowledge and culture to succeed in the 4th Industrial Revolution.Officially available for MBA students of HKUST Business School in early 2020, the AI curriculum is part of Microsoft’s Global AI Business School initiative, designed in partnership with INSEAD and provides the latest thinking on AI transformation in business. Business leaders from local enterprises and organizations can also access the AI curriculum by joining the open executive education program provided by HKUST soon to get ready for the AI future. 

Hong Kong completed two mega infrastructure projects last year — the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge and Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link — and six more are on the way. From highways to railways, few public services are untouched by the discipline of civil engineering. However, non-technical students may still not be aware of the extent of impact civil engineering has on our everyday lives. Prof. Thomas HU of Civil and Environmental Engineering aims not only to transfer knowledge to the youth who may know nothing about civil engineering, but also instill in his students a critical and open mind. Since undertaking “Civil Engineering and Modern Society”, a Common Core course, in early 2016, he has turned it into one of the most practical and popular courses at HKUST, helping students from all sorts of disciplines understand how Hong Kong’s key issues can be solved from a civil engineering perspective.

School of Business and Management, School of Engineering, and School of Science of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) are jointly offering the inaugural university-wide Master of Science in Financial Technology (MSc Fintech) Program in Hong Kong. The MSc Fintech program at HKUST is a one-year full-time or two-year part-time program that aims to bridge the talent gap in the Fintech industry. The Program leverages the diverse expertise of professors in the three schools to provide students with the fundamental knowledge and skills related to popular financial technologies and their engineering and financial principles. Students will enhance their market competitiveness in the multi-disciplinary and booming Fintech space. The first cohort welcomes 60 professionals with backgrounds mainly in finance and technology.

It is common to hear non-arts undergraduate students complain about being forced to take humanities classes that have nothing to do with their area of study or career aspirations. But Dr. Daisy DU Yan, Associate Professor from Division of Humanities, thinks otherwise. Scientists and engineers should study arts and humanities to better understand what their inventions mean to society and humanity.  It is Dr. Du’s mission to involve more and more students in her classes and help them become critical and creative thinkers with a sense of empathy. “Humanities has soft power. Sometimes it can have an even bigger influence on people than scientific inventions,” she adds, bringing examples from history, from Shakespeare to LU Xun, an impactful Chinese writer who started out studying medicine, but later became a writer as he believed in the greater power of words than medicine on people. 

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) will launch Hong Kong’s first undergraduate program in ocean science and technology this September, to nurture a young generation of new professionals with first-hand experience on the investigation, conservation and management of marine environment.