Home Search by - name Search by name: - expertise Last name Message from VPRD First name Research Report 2007-08 Schools Science Engineering Business & Management Humanities & Social Science Departments Language Center Update Your Profile Search by expertise: The 21st century will bring forth a phenomenal transformation of the socio-economic structure of humankind. We will witness the full bloom of the knowledge-based society in which science and technology will be recognized as the engine of economic growth. Research and development will gain increased prominence among human endeavors. Through research and development, new knowledge will be generated, disseminated and utilized to benefit society at a pace previously unimagined. A research university is distinguished by the quality and accomplishments of its faculty, staff and students. It is also characterized by the leadership it demonstrates in transferring the fruits of research to impact society. HKUST, since its inception in 1991, has strived to excel and to attain world-class standing in its chosen fields of pursuit. While the University has encouraged its members to pursue any field of intellectual curiosity and challenge, it has also focused on a number of specific fields to establish core areas of impact and excellence. These include: advanced materials and manufacturing, biotechnology, e- commerce, environment, executive education, infrastructure, IC electronic packaging design, internet and information technology, logistics, microelectronics and microsystems, molecular neuroscience, nano technology, social survey studies, South China research, traditional Chinese medicine, transportation, and wireless communications. This publication highlights the research activities of HKUST faculty members. It is the University's objective to engage in the forefront of global research as well as in specific areas of relevance to Hong Kong. We hope this publication will serve as a useful reference to benchmark our progress toward this goal. Professor Matthew M F YUEN Acting Vice-President for Research and Development Report One - Overview THE HONG KONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORT ON RESEARCH ACTIVITIES, 2007-08 to RESEARCH GRANTS COUNCIL RGC REPORT 1 : OVERVIEW 1. YEAR IN REVIEW HKUST continues to mature as a research-intensive university. One way to illustrate this statement is by reference to global rankings of universities in the international media. WORLD RANKINGS FOR HKUST 2005 2006 2007 Source * University 43 58 53 THES Technology 23 17 23 THES Science 68 69 52 THES Bioscience - 61 80 THES Social Science 58 52 63 THES Arts & Humanities 89 - - THES MBA 44 47 17 FT 82 37 20 EIU EMBA 2 3 1 FT * EIU Economist Intelligence Unit (UK) FT Financial Times (UK) THES Times Higher Education Supplement (UK) Over the past three years, HKUST has been ranked among the top 100 universities in the world in all its fields of intellectual endeavor, i.e., in science, bioscience, engineering (or technology), business and management, and humanities and social science. Most notably, in 2007, HKUST was ranked: - # 1 EMBA program in the world - #23 in the world for Technology 1 Report One - Overview Another, more local, indicator is provided by the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). The bar chart below compares the results for RAE 99 and RAE 06. While the differentials were reduced significantly in 2006 as the research capabilities and performance of all tertiary institutions in Hong Kong have improved, HKUST retains the highest overall research index. RESEARCH ASSESSMENT EXERCISE, 1999 & 2006 (%) 100 86.95 87.12 85.47 75.66 75.24 76.35 75 62.62 1999 50 2006 30.49 25 0 CityU HKBU LU CUHK HKIEd PolyU HKUST HKU Our research mission, drawn from the 1987 Ordinance by which HKUST was established, remains to focus on human resource development with an emphasis on postgraduate education, to maintain excellence across our chosen fields of endeavor, and to make a contribution to the economic and social development of Hong Kong. Our strategy is to attract the best faculty and students, to expect and reward their best performance in research, to assist economic and social development through knowledge transfer, and to stimulate entrepreneurship. Scholarship, research and its development and application are central to the mission and strategy of HKUST. The selection of research highlights presented below covers the spectrum from the most basic research to commercialization and business development. They demonstrate that HKUST is building on its achievements as a world-class research university with regional benefits and impact. HKUST has achieved much. It has helped to redefine the academic and R&D culture of Hong Kong. It has grown from a vision to become a dynamo for change and a catalyst in Hong Kong’s transition to a knowledge-based society. And it has found recognition on the world stage of research universities in just seventeen short years. 2 Report One - Overview Research & Scholarship HKUST researchers continue to make substantial contributions at the forefront of their disciplines, in both basic/ fundamental and applied research. Examples include : • A method to extract the effective liposoluble ingredients from traditional Chinese herbal recipe "Xiasangju" (夏桑菊) has been developed. This extract has been proven effective against flu virus. A China patent filing has been licensed to GuangZhou XingQun Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. China for the development of an anti-flu drug. • A group in Physics has obtained evidence for the smallest carbon nanotubes in the world, 3 Angstroms in diameter, fabricated in the pores of AEL zeolite crystals. In another development, a scheme of acoustic cloaking that can make noisy objects undetectably silent has been devised. Also, achievements in microfluidics integration, in particular the electrical functionalities of microheater arrays, capacitance detection etc., have been highlighted in the January 2008 issue of Physics Today. • Prof Oscar Au has developed a breakthrough technology "Pan-V" that turns a mobile phone into a mobile media centre. The University has filed more than 20 patents in this technology sector, and is seeking to commercialize this high impact technology. • Prof Kevin Chen’s group has developed a novel fluorine plasma treatment technique that provides robust threshold voltage control in wide-bandgap gallium nitride transistors. This technology enables the world’s first self-aligned enhancement-mode AlGaN/GaN HEMT that has a wide range of applications in compact high-power low-noise circuits, high temperature digital ICs and high-efficiency power converters. Patents have been filed in the US, Japan and China. • Two algorithms developed collaboratively by the HKUST Wireless Research Team and Huawei Technologies have been conditionally accepted for inclusion in international standards for the 802.22 Wireless Regional Area Network (WRAN) system. • Prof Albert Ha of Information Systems, Business Statistics and Operations Management and his PhD student Shilu Tong have developed a model to study the incentives for vertical information sharing in supply chains that engage in horizontal competition. They show that the value of information sharing is negative under a linear wholesale price contract (which is widely adopted in practice) but becomes positive under a form of non- linear price contract. • Information Systems, Business Statistics & Operations Management PhD student Samuel Kwan, Profs Mike So and Kar Yan Tam have developed a method to estimate the second moments of responses solicited by Randomized Response Technique. Their novel method unveils hidden relationships among sensitive responses which are critical to the conduct of questionnaire-based research. • Prof Jae-Yun Moon of Information Systems, Business Statistics & Operations Management and her colleagues have examined how self-organizing volunteer teams of the Open Source Software movement on the internet are formed and how individuals decide on which teams to join. They found that incumbent status and the potential for collaborative ties play significant roles in these processes. 3 Report One - Overview • Prof W J Ye’s group has developed an efficient molecule-based numerical technique for the modeling of non-equilibrium submicron gas transport. This technique overcomes the major drawback of molecule-based simulation methods, i.e., the extremely high computational cost, and makes the computer-aided design of high-performance MEMS/NEMS devices and systems feasible. • In a collaborative study on China’s stock market, Prof Kevin Chen documented some benefits of the Chinese government’s requirement of listed firms to achieve a minimum return on equity (ROE) before they can apply for permission to issue additional shares. The most important benefit is that the regulation reduces adverse selection in new share issuance, i.e., firms below the ROE threshold underperformed the market after the issuance (as has been observed in other markets), while those above the threshold outperformed the market. • In a collaborative study, Prof Tai-yuan Chen showed that family firms report better quality earnings, are more likely to warn of a given magnitude of bad news, but make fewer disclosures about their corporate governance practices. In addition, family firms have larger analyst following, more informative analysts’ forecasts, and smaller bid-ask spreads. These results support the hypothesis that family firms face less severe agency problems than non-family firms. • In a collaborative study,