SDG9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
Photo Credit: Project Ha Giang 2019
Research
Support MiC supply chain development in the Greater Bay Area
The Department of Civil Engineering continues to take the world-leading role in researching the use of construction innovation such as the modular Integrated Construction (MiC). A multidisciplinary team of researchers led by the Department has launched a four-year research project to propose strategies to enhance MiC supply chain in the Greater Bay Area for Hong Kong development. The project adopted a multi-policy, strategic, and holistic approach to examining the MiC supply chain, the team will identify the MiC supply chain, develop a systemic framework with key performance indicators, formulate a demand-and-supply predictive model, and produce a public policy roadmap with an action plan.
Key Data
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2019-20
124
Courses
6,033
ResearchPapers
67
Students
enrolled
Engagement and Outreach
SMART approach to family services
HKU’s School of Public Health and Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative (TELI) joined forces to develop the Jockey Club SMART Family-link Project to help family service centres to enhance the quality and efficiency of their services by making effective use of information and communications technology and data analytics. The project involves creating a computerised service management system for integrated family service centres that mostly still use a paper-based system. The system is expected to reduce administrative work and release more resources for preventive programmes, improve access, broaden reach, reduce stigmatisation, and facilitate identification of at-risk families for early support and remedial services.
Nurturing HKU deep-technology start-ups and spin-offs
HKU has collaborated with the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) to open the HKSTP-HKU iAXON (iAXON), the HKSTP Hub at Western District. The Hub aims to nurture deep technology start-ups and spin-offs from HKU by leveraging on the resources of HKU and HKSTP. The facility will provide office spaces and HKSTP’s incubation support services, and funding programmes for deep technology start-ups founded by HKU students, faculty members, staff and alumni that are currently doing academic research at the University that plans to proceed towards commercial development.
Teaching, Learning and Students Activities
Courses and programmes
HKU promotes innovation and development by incorporating entrepreneurship, technology and innovation in our curriculum. The Major in Entrepreneurship, Design and Innovation (EDI) focuses on business management, innovation development and commercialization, nurturing talents with a creative entrepreneur mindset backed with solid financial and economic industrial knowledge. On the other hand, our Minor in Science Entrepreneurship promotes entrepreneurship development of students by offering internal and external expertise which prepares students for future development in the start-up world.
2nd runner up in the AI Driving Olympics
HKU students gained major recognition in the field of robotics by winning the 2nd runner up in the “AI Driving Olympics” (AI-DO) at International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), a total of 192 competitors, including research teams from all over the world, participated in the competition held in Montreal, Canada. Supervised by Dr Loretta Choi of the Department of Computer Science, the HKU Duckie Town team comprised six undergraduate Engineering students of which four from Computer Science. In the competition, the team needs to develop an imitation learning algorithm using inputs from cameras that maximises the travelled distance and survival time of their robotic vehicle in a miniature town.
Operations
HKU ITS sustainability efforts
HKU’s Information Technology Services (ITS) continually identifies ways to improve resource efficiency, reduce environmental footprint, and upgrade technological capabilities in the campus operations.
To reduce the burden of departmental IT staff, ITS launched centrally managed Virtual Personal Computers (VPCs) in 2018. The VPCs can meet the needs of most departmental staff and can be managed remotely by ITS staff. VPCs are also more environmentally friendly as they consume less energy. To combat the high energy use of servers and other computer equipment, server virtualisation is deployed, saving a total of 108,000 KVA from 2019 to 2020.
ITS also offers regular computer training courses and workshops throughout the year to familiarise students and staff with IT services. In 2019-2020, more than 2,100 students and staff have benefited from such training.