19 18 HKUST Annual Report 2020-2021 LAB TO MARKET In addition, the Research Impact Fund awarded a total of $12.3 million to two projects. Prof. ZHAO Tianshou (Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering) received $6.58 million to develop safe, sustainable, energy-dense all-solidstate lithium batteries and help meet the ever-growing demand for more powerful, smaller, and longer-lasting power units. Prof. LI Bo (Computer Science and Engineering) was awarded $5.72 million to design and build an advanced machine learning training platform, driven by pooled data from across organizational domains. Innovation and Technology Commission The Innovation and Technology Commission (ITC), which supports local institutions in transferring knowledge into pace-setting applications, awarded $123.7 million to the University for 31 applied projects starting in 2020-21. Among these, Prof. Gary CHAN’s $8.1 million project, jointly funded by the ITC and industry partners, will create novel internet of things and multimodal analytic technologies for smart and cost-effective car parks, while Prof. ZHU Pengyu (Public Policy)’s $1.67 million multidisciplinary study will generate an aviation innovation blueprint in light of COVID-19 to inform Hong Kong’s development as a global aviation hub in the next 10 years. HKUST is set to convene the first International Aviation Technology and Business Annual Conference in early 2022, fostering a long-term government-industry-academic collaborative network. RESEARCH HUBS THAT ACTIVATE DISCOVERIES HKUST research centers and joint labs strengthen and deepen areas of key focus and foster interaction among facu l ty by br i ng i ng together researchers beyond individual disciplines as well as with industry. 2020-21 saw four addi t ional research centers and one joint lab established. The new entities – HKUSTNan Fung Life Sciences Joint Laboratory, IAS Center for Quantum Technologies, Center on Smart Sensors and Environmental Technologies, Center for Medical Imaging and Analysis, and Center for Economic Policy – wi l l leverage the University’s research strength and emerg i ng oppor tun i t i es i n l i fe sc i ence , quantum technologies, smart sensors, and medical imaging, and boost innovation and development capabilities in these pivotal areas for the future. This brings the total number of research laboratories, centers, and institutes on the Clear Water Bay campus to 64 which, along with the three research centers set up by HKUST under the Hong Kong government’s InnoHK initiative, demonstrates the University is provisioned and commi tted to seeking col laborat ions to foster interdisciplinary research, the nurturing of next-generation talent, and social impact. These research endeavors will be further widened in subsequent years with the opening of HKUST(GZ). The ITC’s Midstream Research Programme for Universities also supported four HKUST applications under the scheme’s Health Technologies for Diagnosis theme. Among these, a $7.7 million grant was awarded to a collaboration led by Prof. Nancy IP (Life Science) and involving Haven of Hope Christian Service, a non-profit organization, and Queen Mary Hospital. The team will develop a cost-effective bloodbased biomarker platform for diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Other funded proposals seek to advance cancer diagnosis and pathogen detection. Mainland Support Mainland bodies maintained their robust support for HKUST advances in hi-tech innovation. National support over the year included $16.6 million from the Ministry of Science and Technology. Regionally, Zhongshan Municipal Science and Technology Bureau supported four projects totaling $18.8 million. These encompassed studies into a driverless security monitoring vehicle system; smart gas sensor for the internet of things; smart soft exoskeleton for hand rehabilitation; and reusable rapid spectroscopic detection of pesticide residues. HKUST again demonstrated the world-class quality of its research in the six-yearly University Grants Committee’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). In the 2020 exercise, 81% of the University’s research outputs, impact cases, and research environment statements submitted by 446 eligible faculty members were judged by international experts to be “internationally excellent” or “world-leading”. Research areas encompassed nine of the RAE’s 13 broadly based assessment pane l s , wi th HKUST attaining the highest percentage of “worldleading” research among local universities in five panels: physical sciences, electrical and electronic engineering, bui lt environment , business and economics, and social sciences. In addition, nearly 90% of the University’s impact cases were assessed to have “considerable or outstanding impact” in reach and significance. OUTSTANDING RESULTS IN RAE 2020 81% of Research Submissions Internationally Excellent OR World-Leading
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