News & Stories

Prof. Rhea LIEM's career is one that has been forged in adversity. A convergence of crises, both familial and societal, led to her making decisive career choices at a young age. “My life was turned upside down, but actually in a good way," says Prof. Liem, Assistant Professor of Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, who recently won the University Grants Committee (UGC) Teaching Award 2021 under the category of Early Career Faculty Members.

 Sixty years ago, the whole world was gladly amazed when the first human blasted into space; over the years, hundreds of exploration missions have been deployed to extend our knowledge and understanding of the universe. Of all the space mysteries scientists still hope to solve, black holes remain the strangest and most mysterious phenomena we know so little about. After decades of effort, scientists finally reached a major milestone when they came face to face with a black hole by capturing its first-ever image in 2019, and a more detailed one earlier this year. The ground-breaking images show the supermassive black hole at the center of Messier 87, a galaxy about 54 million light-years away from Earth. The black hole's mass is equivalent to 6.5 billion suns.

Bookcrossing has grown into a global phenomenon in the past decade, but the idea still hasn’t taken off in Hong Kong. A team of HKUST alumni are determined to build a local reading culture by releasing second-hand books into the wild, with the help of an app they designed.Book circulation was stagnant with the traditional way of bookcrossing. Thousands of books ended up sitting on our shelves.

An award-winning AI solution company sets out to modernize and automate worksite safety monitoring while improving efficiency.

A university education is sure to help pave the way for your future success by taking your interests to ever-higher levels. In the third part of this year’s Why HKUST? Series, two Malaysians detail how their HKUST courses have enabled them to transform their academic interests into meaningful professional achievements.Bor  Hung CHONG first became interested in entrepreneurship while still at high school. Though he had never previously studied commerce, he elected to write a business plan for his grade-10 personal project. “I asked a business teacher to mentor me on my project which involved pitching the opening of a suit store in a nearby shopping mall,” says Bor Hung. His teacher was subsequently amazed by the in-depth and articulate nature of his research and strategic thinking.

I was quite a bad student until I found my passion.Having dreamed of working in the gaming industry from a young age, Prof. Kenneth LEUNG, Assistant Professor of Engineering Education at HKUST’s School of Engineering never thought he would become a professor one day, let alone winning a teaching award.  “I was quite a bad student until I went to college,” recounts the winner of the HKUST 2021 Common Core Teaching Excellence Award. “But then I discovered an interest in computer science and continued my studies in the graduate level. Before I realized, I became a teaching assistant (TA), and now, a professor at HKUST where I got my PhD.”  Expectations met Reality