HKUST Annual Report 2016-17

39 Platforms for Innovation Over 2016-17, the University’s Mainland platforms in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Foshan advanced their knowledge transfer activities and innovation under the guiding hand of the HKUST Fok Ying Tung Graduate School in Nansha. The HKUST Fok Ying Tung Research Institute develops innovative technologies and nurtures start-ups. Shenzhen Research Institute secures research projects, provides training, and engages with local industry and government. HKUST R and D Corporation (Shenzhen) Ltd runs an Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center and has set up the Blue Bay incubator program to provide a full incubation service to the HKUST community in Shenzhen. These platforms provide significant opportunities for HKUST faculty to secure Mainland R&D projects and engage in knowledge transfer and commercialization. They also assist HKUST students and alumni in deploying start-ups in Mainland China and help the University serve as a leading training hub for innovation and entrepreneurship talents in Shenzhen. The HKUST LED-FPD Technology R&D Center at Foshan celebrated its fifth anniversary during the year. It continued to focus on light-emitting diode research and development, moving on to III-V device packaging technology development. Industry Interaction The University extended its interaction with major Mainland enterprises through the development of research collaborations, job placements, student internships, and executive training opportunities. In November 2016, Prof Wang Jian, the President and Co-Founder of the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), was invited to give a talk at the University as part of the HKUST 25th Anniversary Distinguished Speakers Series. Subsequently, the Vice-President for Research and Graduate Studies led a delegation in early 2017 to meet with the senior management of BGI and agreed on the establishment of a joint research center that will set the stage for the next-generation sequencing platform and research collaboration that produce novel medical diagnosis and treatments with transformative impact. In addition to BGI, HKUST is also working closely with other enterprises such as Alibaba, China Life, Fosun, Huawei, Didi, Lenovo, Tencent, and Vanke. In further activities, the University co-organized “Hack-O-Life 2016”, a hackathon, with AIA and Cisco in November 2016, in which Hong Kong and Mainland universities explored innovations related to healthy aging. FunPlus, a Mainland video and mobile game development company, co-organized a game development competition with HKUST as part of HackUST 2017, the largest student- organized hackathon in Asia. The Fosun-HKUST MBA Technopreneur program was also launched to develop new products and services related to the health and happiness industry sector. International and Mainland Strategy