HKUST Annual Report 2024-2025

POWERING UP COMMITMENT TO DELIVER POSITIVE CHANGE HKUST Connect, an initiative that develops service partnerships and encourages University members to engage in community activities, significantly promoted social responsibility in 2024–25. Through 70 service programs, it recorded over 2,100 instances of student participation. International service-learning trips provided educational support for over 650 students in Guilin, Xinjiang, and Vietnam, forging person-to-person connections and enriching perspectives through immersion in different cultures. As a partner in the One Earth NextGen Leaders program, organized by the Hong Kong-based Institute of Sustainability and Technology and Singapore’s Temasek Foundation, the University was delighted to see 100 young changemakers from Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Chinese Mainland visit our Sustainable Smart Campus hub and Entrepreneurship Center. During their time at HKUST, NextGen Leaders learned how to use a campus as a living lab to test their ideas and to utilize university resources to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. We also partnered with Lang Qing Charity to host “Climate Innovator”, a program that empowers young leaders to actively work toward carbon neutrality through cross-regional exchange. The program was supported by the Environment and Ecology Bureau of the Government of the HKSAR and Zhuhai Environmental Education, Communication and Exchange Center, with guidance from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment’s Center for Environmental Education and Communications. On sustainable contributions to healthcare, the University’s Student Innovation for Global Health Technology (SIGHT) platform continues to deliver creative, simple technology solutions that make a major difference to people’s lives in low-resource areas of Asia. Established in 2014, SIGHT has enabled HKUST students to address real-world health needs through design thinking process, resulting in more than 30 projects across Asia involving over 500 student participants. In 2025, the focus was on Sri Lanka, where students developed a user-centered telemedicine system and collaborated with a local medical school to pioneer innovative solutions for pressing community health challenges.