HKUST Annual Report 2016-17

17 Scholarship Success Story Over 300 scholarships were awarded to 290 postgraduates in 2016-17. The total amount of scholarships granted to postgraduate and undergraduate students over the year rose to $75.22 million, an increase of 9% compared with 2015-16. In external awards, HKUST continued its success in the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS), a prestigious city-wide international scholarship program offered by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council to draw the best and brightest doctoral students from around the world to the city’s universities. In 2016-17, HKUST recruited the largest number of awardees for the sixth year in a row. Of the total 231 HKPFS awards for 2017- 18 admission, the University secured 64 awardees, representing close to 28% of the total. These distinguished students come from 22 countries and regions, contributing significantly to the ethnic diversity of the research student community. INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP HKUST students successfully engaged in numerous entrepreneurship and innovation events and activities over 2016-17. The Joint University Student Training in Entrepreneurship Program (STEP) Pitch Day competition saw three HKUST student teams win the top three prizes. The event was organized by CoCoon, a leading entrepreneurship network based in Hong Kong. HKUST students also received three top prizes at the two-day FinTech Hackathon, run by Deloitte Digital. The hackathon challenged developers, designers and entrepreneurs to develop prototypes for real FinTech solutions for millennials. Over 20 HKUST students participated in the APAC Innovation 2016 Series – The Elevator World Tour Hong Kong, organized by Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corp at Sky100, International Commerce Center. An HKUST MBA start-up won the pitching championship. The event attracted 100 start-ups, encouraging networking and exchange of ideas in addition to participation in the elevator pitch contest. Two HKUST start-up teams also joined the Cyberport University Partnership Programme, which included a 10-day trip to Silicon Valley as well as a Demo Day pitching event in Hong Kong. At the latter activity, the HKUST teams received $200,000 for their start-up ideas. In June 2017, seven HKUST students become First Runners-Up in the open competition of the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2017. Microsoft’s global technology competition gives students worldwide the opportunity to showcase their creativity and skills in creating novel applications and games. HKUST’s 7th Annual One Million Dollar Entrepreneurship Competition attracted close to 90 teams to the Hong Kong contest, including many HKUST faculty, staff, students and alumni. In the Hong Kong final in June 2017, the President Award and the Elevator Pitch Award went to the Maxustech team for its smart tech approach to controlling home devices to provide more natural human-computer interaction. Judges comprised leading executives, professional investors and entrepreneurial academics. Other regional contests were held in Macau, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, with the grand final taking place at the HKUST Fok Ying Tung Research Institute in Nansha, Guangzhou, in August 2017. Education Development