24
HKUST 2014-2015
Annual Report
have an immediate impact on local and international practice
on the analysis of the interaction between debris flows
and multiple flexible barriers, lead to world-leading design
guidelines, sustainable and proven mitigation measures
and enhance cost-effectiveness and more environmentally
friendly maintenance and remediation works in Hong Kong,
and other countries where debris flows are a constant threat.
SMART GREEN WORKPLACES
Prof Amine Bermak (Electronic and Computer Engineering)
is leading a team of academics in Hong Kong and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US in developing
a wireless multi-sensing platform that can be fitted in smart
green buildings to detect temperature, humidity, motion
in the room, and harmful gases in the air. The HKUST-MIT
Research Alliance Consortium project received a grant from
the government’s Innovation and Technology Fund, Intel and
Texas Instruments. The sensors should enable collection
of data to develop better working environments for office
workers and contribute to the evolution of smart green buildings.
CLEANING UP WATERWAYS
Prof Irene Lo (Civil and Environmental Engineering) led a
consultancy project on the remediation of river sediment
contaminated by heavy metals and organic pollutants in
collaboration with the Guangdong government. Prof Lo has
devoted the past two decades to soil, sediment and water
pollution control through physical, chemical and biological
treatment processes. She proposed several alternatives for
the remediation of such river contamination.
FRESH ROUTE TO PEPTIDE THERAPEUTICS
Prof Ying Chau, Biomedical Engineering, and Dr Rong Ni,
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, designed short
peptides that co-assemble with DNA to form virus-like
particles, offer a potential new route to transport genes or
small-molecule drugs into cells. This discovery may overcome
the limitation of both viral and non-viral gene delivery vectors
and breakthrough the current bottleneck of gene therapy by
leading to safer and higher efficiency viral-like gene-transfer
vehicles through peptide sequence regulation. This simple
peptide/DNA co-assembling system also provides us a study
model to understand the origin of virion at the prebiotic age.
This work has been published in
Journal of the American
Chemical Society.
CROSS-CULTURAL GAINS
Intercultural negotiations are often seen as challenging
because cross-cultural differences and distrust toward those
regarded as foreign can impede communication. Contrary
to this conventional wisdom, research conducted by Prof
Melody Chao (Management), and co-authors, demonstrated
that intercultural negotiations can be more effective than
intracultural ones. Findings from two negotiation simulation
studies revealed that negotiators who believed in malleable
cultural characteristics were more likely to extend trust to
their intercultural (vs intracultural) partners, which enhanced
personal gains, as well as joint gains of negotiation dyads.
PRICE INFORMATION AND MARKET ACCESS
In a field experiment by Prof Sujata Visaria (Economics), and
co-authors, in two districts of West Bengal, India, farmers
RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT
