HKUST Annual Report 2017-18

A N N U A L R E P O R T 2 0 1 7 - 1 8 HKUST 25 WHY BEING BUSY MATTERS TO US An increasing number of people in recent times have reported feeling busier than ever. Prof. Christine KIM (Marketing) and her coauthors investigated how the subjective perception of busyness – that is, viewing the self as busy – impacts on individuals’ decision-making. Key findings showed that when people viewed themselves as busy, they felt important and that their lives mattered. This bolstered sense of self, in turn helping them make better decisions more in line with their long-term goals. The research has been published in Harvard Business Review and is forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research. ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVES ON PAST AND PRESENT Prof. David Cheng CHANG (Humanities) completed The Hijacked War: The Story of Chinese POWs in the Korean War (Stanford University Press, March 2019). The armistice talks took two years because 14,000 Chinese prisoners of war (POWs) refused to return to Mainland China. The book portrays the POWs’ experiences and explains how they thwarted the designs of world leaders at a pivotal moment in Cold War history. Prof. Stuart GIETEL-BASTEN (Social Science) finished his book on The Population Problem (Oxford University Press, Summer 2019). Low fertility and population aging are often perceived to be an existential threat to the 21st century being the “Asian century”. Drawing on evidence from across Pacific Asia, the work looks at these issues in a multi-dimensional way, considering why fertility is so low and has caused such concern. ENERGY EFFICIENCY BOOST FOR LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY A research team from HKUST State Key Laboratory of Advanced Displays and Optoelectronics Technologies, led by Prof. KWOK Hoi-Sing (Electronic and Computer Engineering), achieved a display technology breakthrough by developing a liquid-crystal display known as active matrix ferroelectric liquid crystal display. In comparison with conventional display, the HKUST technology increases energy efficiency by three to five times while image resolution was enhanced by three times. The higher performance was also achieved at a lower cost given that color filters, which usually comprise 30% of a display’s manufacturing cost, are no longer necessary with the new approach.