News & Stories

A Hong Kong University of Science and Technology research team led by Prof Benzhong Tang - Stephen Kam-chuen Cheong Professor of Science, Chair Professor of Chemistry and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has discovered new AIE materials which could be used on visualizing fingerprints and revealing bacteria with greater effectiveness. The new materials not only produce fingerprints of much better quality as compared to carbon powder, saving 90 per cent of the time in evidence collection, they also make a more accurate and stable agent in detecting bacterial activities. Prof Tang has developed numerous AIE materials ever since his discovery of the AIE phenomenon in 2001, they were applied in a wide range of areas including high-performance OLEDs, cancer screening and environmental monitoring. His latest discoveries have expanded AIE’s applications into the arena of forensic science and bacterial detection.

As we all know, proteins are essential to all living organisms including human beings. Most of the enzymes are made of proteins, and there are countless enzymes on earth that function as catalysts, playing an important role in speeding up biological reactions in living cells. We simply cannot live without enzymes. Recently, a team of scientists at the IAS HKUST-Scripps R&D Laboratory has discovered 250 new proteins with previously unidentified activities. The research was led by Prof Paul Schimmel, the Ernest and Jean Hahn Professor of Molecular Biology and Chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute (California and Florida) and a visiting professor of the IAS. Detailed findings were published in Science in July.

A research team at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has solved a long-standing question in photosynthesis which provides insight into the design of artificial photosynthetic systems that may serve as alternative energy devices by effectively utilizing the sunlight. The research was led by Assistant Prof Xuhui Huang and Prof Yijing Yan of the Department of Chemistry and their findings were recently published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.

A Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) research team led by Prof Yui-bun Chan from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, with support from leading global aluminium producer UC RUSAL (SEHK:486, EuroNext: RUSAL/RUAL, Moscow Exchange: RUALR/RUALRS), has discovered a new aluminium composite – Fiber Reinforced Aluminium. This new material is stronger than existing aluminium, cheaper and lighter than steel, and can also be used with insulation panels designed to produce a building envelope system that is safer, cheaper, more energy-efficient and easier to mount. The project is now undergoing its final phase and is expected to complete in 2015.

A team led by scientists at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study and The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) R&D Laboratory (IAS HKUST-Scripps R&D Laboratory) and aTyr Pharma has found that ancient enzymes, known for their fundamental role in translating genetic information into proteins, evolved myriad other functions in humans. The surprising discovery of 250 new proteins with previously unidentified activities spanning from stem cell biology to immunology highlights an intriguing oddity of protein evolution as well as a potentially valuable new class of therapeutic proteins. These findings appear in the July 18, 2014 issue of Science.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has invented a mini pulsed electric field device which could reduce more than 90 percent of bacteria in the running tap water in a few seconds. The technology is a possible way to help control the spread of water-borne diseases such as Legionellosis caused by microbial contamination of water.

A research team led by Prof Nancy Ip, Dean of Science, Director of the State Key Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience and The Morningside Professor of Life Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), has successfully discovered a novel molecular target for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), unveiling a potentially new therapy for the disease. The team recently discovered that aberrant activation of the protein EphA4 is involved in the pathology of AD and identified a naturally occurring compound from a traditional Chinese medicine herb that can block the activity of EphA4. These groundbreaking discoveries have been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), a prestigious scientific journal.

A research team from the Department of Physics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has achieved a scientific breakthrough by demonstrating that a two-dimensional superconductivity occurs at the interface between two new classes of materials. The groundbreaking discovery in the emerging field of topological superconductors could advance the development of a practical fault-tolerant quantum computer with unusually high computing power, and data storage abilities. The findings were recently reported in a paper entitled “Two-dimensional superconductivity at the interface of a Bi2Te3/FeTe heterostructure” that was published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.