News & Stories

President Tony Chan of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has been invited to share his insights with top global leaders at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting – which will be held between 21 and 24 January 2015 in Davos, Switzerland.  In addition, four HKUST professors will hold an IdeasLab at Winter Davos – HKUST is the only university in Asia to hold an IdeasLab at Davos this year.  Only six other universities are holding IdeasLab at Davos--including Oxford, Harvard, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, etc.

It started off as a mission to seek wider application for aluminum in the construction industry, then it turned into something much bigger. When Prof Yui-bun Chan from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering began his research, funded by the world’s leading aluminum producer UC RUSAL, in 2011, he was mainly looking for ways that would give aluminum more roles in buildings other than being used largely on window frames. However, weeks before the three-year research is due to end, Prof Chan discovered a technique that gave rise to a new aluminum composite – Fiber Reinforced Aluminum (FRA), which completely changed the picture.

The world is now using the 4-G wireless systems but the research community is already hard at work creating the next generation 5-G wireless systems, expected to arrive by 2020.  What sets the future 5-G apart from the current 4-G?  It will have a data capacity 1000 times greater, connecting up 1000 times more devices with energy efficiency 1000 times better, translating into faster bit rate and significantly lower latency. In addition, it will support new application scenarios such as machine-to-machine communications.  Such goals are not easily achievable.  Earlier speaking in the HKUST’s Science-for-Lunch Talk, Prof Vincent Lau has shared the new vision and applications as well as technical challenges and opportunities. The sharing can now be viewed here.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) is pleased to announce that Prof Michael Altman, Head of the Department of Physics, was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). Upon recommendation of the APS Division of Condensed Matter Physics, Prof Altman was cited “for development and use of spin polarized low energy electron microscopy to understand surface processes of solids.” Prof Altman joined HKUST as a founding member of the Department of Physics in 1991. He received the HKUST School of Science Teaching Award in 1997 and has been serving as Department Head since 2011. His research in condensed matter physics is targeted at understanding the structure, dynamics, electronic and magnetic properties of solid surfaces, interfaces and thin film nanostructures, including diffusion and growth, kinetic instabilities and quantum size effects.