News & Stories

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.

The School of Business and Management of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST Business School) and ZhongAn Technologies International Group Ltd (ZA International) signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) to open up a new stream of opportunities for faculty and students in the fields of Fintech and Insurtech. The HKUST Business School aspires to become a major intellectual powerhouse of Fintech in Asia and is undertaking a major Fintech research project funded by the Research Grants Council under its Theme-based Research Scheme. The project examines the impacts of Fintech on Hong Kong and looks into ways to contribute to the development of the city into a global Fintech hub.

By Mow Wai-ho, Associate Professor of Electronic and Computer Engineering, HKUST Compared with the mainland, Hong Kong seems to be lagging behind in adopting QR codes for financial transactions. However, innovators in Hong Kong are not standing still in developing the next generation of barcodes that can revolutionize the way we do business. For example, my research team is continuing to work on PiCode, a barcode variant that utilizes images instead of the black-and-white lines and blocks that comprise conventional barcodes and QR codes. We have spent almost five years researching picture- and video-embedded codes, and are now in the demonstration phase. Picture-embedded barcodes offer considerable potential in consumer marketing. Many people may find regular barcodes intrusive, and businesses have searched for ways to transmit data and information to consumers in a more pleasing format.

A joint research team of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and The South China Normal University (SCNU) has set a new record of photonic quantum memory efficiency, pushing quantum computation a step closer to reality. Like memories in computers, quantum memories are essential components for quantum computers – a new generation of data processors that obey quantum mechanics laws and can overcome the limitations of classical computers. They may push boundaries of fundamental science and help create new drugs, explain cosmological mysteries, or enhance accuracy of forecasts and optimization plans with their potent computational power. Quantum computers are expected to be much faster and more powerful than their traditional counterparts as information is calculated in qubits – which unlike the older units (bits) used in classical computers, can represent both 0 and 1 at the same time.  

Scientists from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have recently uncovered the mechanisms of how RNA polymerase II performs intrinsic cleavage reaction to proofread RNA transcriptions, shedding light on how mis-regulation of accurate transcription can lead to diseases including cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. The message of life is encoded in our genomic DNA through transcription of messenger RNAs and translation of proteins to perform cellular functions. To ensure accurate transcription – a process that transcribes genomic DNA into messenger RNA by adding nucleotides one by one like letters in the alphabet, an enzyme called RNA polymerase II would synthesize and proofread messenger RNA to remove any mis-incorporated nucleotides that do not match with the DNA template.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) will build a new kind of camera – using a new approach of quantum optics to detect previously undetectable signals from billions of light years away.  The camera is set to help solve unanswered questions in astrophysics and cosmology, such as how light originates and varies around the black hole, in the hope of deciphering information emitted from there.

A group of marine scientists at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) recently discovered over 7,000 new microbial species in the Oceans, including Acidobacteria – a natural medicinal phylum with the CRISPR gene editing system discovered at sea for the first time, shedding new light on human’s understanding of microbial biodiversity in the oceans and bringing hope to the development of new drugs.

A research team consisting of scientists from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Jinan University discovered a new mechanism that could delay the degeneration of injured nerves, bringing new hope to the treatment of nerve damage and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).Axon is the long projection of a neuron/nerve cell that transmits electrical impulses to muscles and other nerve cells.  How nerves, bundles of axons and often meter-long processes of neurons maintain their integrity has been one of the fundamental questions in neuroscience, as failure of axonal integrity may cause axonal dying back or retrograde degeneration of nerves – a process very similar to the injury-induced Wallerian Degeneration.  For years, NMNAT-related signaling pathway was the only mechanism known to have deterrent effect against this process.