News & Stories

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) received two awards at the Wharton-QS Stars Awards 2014: Reimagine Education, also known as the “Oscars” of innovation in higher education, in recognition of its innovative e-learning programs. The Awards, the first global awards for recognizing innovative higher education pedagogies that enhance learning and employability, were organized by The Wharton SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management, University of Pennsylvania, and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), publisher of the QS World University Rankings.

Four students of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) won the top honors as Champions of Hong Kong’s first ever Healthcare Designathon Competition. The winning product, Fit-Kick, seeks to provide performance gains and injury prevention for athletes. The AIA Group who sponsored the contest has found the product very interesting and is advising the students on its future development. The team will hold talks with AIA EDGE, The AIA Group’s innovation unit, and venture capitalists in the coming weeks to provide resources to further develop the product for commercialization.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has risen two places to rank #16 in the high-profile annual Global Employability University Survey and Ranking this year, as reported by the New York Times.  HKUST remains No. 1 in Greater China. The survey polled 4,500 recruiters and executives from 20 countries including the United States, China, Japan, Britian, Mexico, Morocco, Spain and others from Europe, over half came from the leading 1,000 companies.  The majority thinks that a global university model will arise, and that universities of tomorrow should prepare students for the realities of work with a balanced mix of theoretical and practical training as they evolved towards a fundamenmtal reshuffle.  The survey has also noted that universities with a focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) spectrum of subjects do much better in this ranking.

Five undergraduate students from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) came second among 153 teams – comprising mostly postgraduate students and professionals, in the first and biggest national aircraft design competition organized by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC). The “Soaring Dragon” is a two-seater amphibious aircraft featuring a pair of hydrofoils at the bottom that minimizes the take-off distance on water, a downward folding wing tip that warns pilots of water breaches and foldable wings which allows flexible movements and storage on ground. The students who created “Soaring Dragon” will be invited to join an expert team at HKUST commissioned to build a similar model for the private aviation market in Mainland China.

The Kellogg-HKUST Executive MBA (EMBA) program maintains its world’s leading position and has been ranked No. 2 in this year’s Financial Times EMBA Ranking. Since 2007 the program has been consistently ranked among the world’s best clinching No.1 for six years and No.2 for two years. The program is jointly offered by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s School of Business and Management (HKUST Business School) and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Since its launch in 1998, the program has been committed to delivering a premier learning experience for senior executives to understand the business perspectives of the two most dynamic regions in the world.

Three distinguished professors from the University attended a luncheon on October 15 to receive awards as the top scientists in the globe by Thomson Reuters for their outstanding research achievements. The trio included in the list of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds 2014 are Prof Benzhong Tang, - Stephen Kam-chuen Cheong Professor of Science, Chair Professor of Chemistry and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Prof Tianshou Zhao, Chair Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at HKUST, Director of the HKUST Energy Institute, and a Senior Fellow of the HKUST Institute for Advanced Study; and Dr Jacky W Y Lam from theDepartment of Chemistry.

Prof Ricky Shi-wei Lee, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Director of Center for Advanced Microsystems Packaging (CAMP) at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) was selected as the winner of the 2014 Calvin W Rice Lecture Award by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for his contribution to the mechanical engineering society across the world.  Prof Lee is the first scholar in Hong Kong to have won this prestigious award.  Prof Lee will deliver the Calvin W Rice Lecture at the annual ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition Conference (IMECE) which is to be held in Montreal, Canada in November 2014.

The team “EnerBy” from HKUST won the energy management company Schneider Electric’s Global Business Case Challenge “Go Green in the City 2014” that was held in Paris from 17-21 June 2014. The winning team, which comprises of Keith Chan Jin-Deng and Jasmine Lee Man-Ki, students of BSc in Environmental Management and Technology program at HKUST, beat over 10,000 students from all over the world with their business case Energy Forecast Program. The program integrates smart plugs to allow smart metering through a mobile application. The HKUST students’ entry is a mobile application that bills customers before using electricity, allowing people to efficiently monitor and manage their use of energy consumption.