HKUST Annual Report 2018-19

38 ANNUAL REPORT 2018-19 Local to Global University Ties On the inter-university front, HKUST entered into more in- depth agreements with the University of Chinese Academy Sciences and Tsinghua University respectively to enhance academic and research collaborations and facilitate student exchange. President Wei SHYY attended the first Presidents’ Forum organized by the Beijing-Hong Kong Universities Alliance in October 2018. More than 15 Presidents and Vice- Presidents from Beijing and Hong Kong participated in the gathering in the Chinese capital, with Prof. Shyy delivering a speech on academic openness and greater cross-border collaboration and exchange. As part of this institutional cooperation, the School of Humanities and Social Science initiated an alliance on global history with the Institute for Global History at Beijing Foreign Studies University. The alliance was established to foster education, research, knowledge transfer, and student interaction between universities in Beijing andHong Kong. National Science Conference For the first time, HKUST hosted the two-day Xiangshan Science Conference, a national symposium established by the Ministry of Science and Technology and Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1993. The focus of the conference was neuromorphic computing and artificial intelligence. Close to 40 scholars from Hong Kong, Macau, and the Mainland attended. In addition, the event marked the official launch of the Hong Kong Society of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. Prof. YANG Qiang (Computer ScienceandEngineering) isthegroup’sfoundingpresident. Summer Davos Five faculty members attended Summer Davos 2018 in Tianjin. Profs. ZHANG Qian (Computer Science and Engineering), Matthew MCKAY (Electronic and Computer Engineering, and Chemical and Biological Engineering) and CHAU Ying (Chemical and Biological Engineering) participated in an HKUST IdeasLab workshop on “Engineering Solutions for Public Health”. The academics presented on taking healthcare beyond hospitals through information technology, computational immunology and vaccines, and eye and vision health for aging populations respectively. In addition, Prof. McKay was named a World Economic Forum Young Scientist together with Profs. Angela WU (Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Life Science) and HE Guojun (Social Science, Environment and Sustainability, and Economics), who also went to Summer Davos 2018. GLOBAL NETWORK University Partners The University markedly extended its network with top institutions in different parts of the world over 2018-19, with agreements increasing to over 300 active partners globally. This represents an increase of 24% compared with the previous year. The agreements set out to foster academic and research exchanges as well as collaborations. Such arrangements included new School of Science partnerships with Harvard Medical School Teaching Hospital, the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Stanford University and University College London to advance translational neuroscience research, and a collaboration with the University of Haifa, Israel, to develop academic ties related to marine sciences. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed with the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, an independent institute for the advanced study of the humanities. The arrangement, effective from October 2018, will allow the School of Humanities and Social Science to nominate up to three humanities faculty annually for fellowships at the Center. The School continued its successful nomination of faculty under the Harvard Yenching Visiting Scholar fellowship program, with Prof. Carine YIU conducting research under the program in 2018-19. The Interdisciplinary Programs Office (IPO) also agreed aMemorandumof Understanding with independent leadership organization Salzburg Global Seminars to sponsor IPO students to join Salzburg programs. International Business Links Ties with overseas businesses extended over the year to strengthen insights on both sides. New partnerships included the School of Business and Management’s collaboration with multinational accountancy firm KPMG to boost accountancy training, as well as the School of Science’s Department of Mathematics’ agreement with leading global semi-conductor device firm Nexperia on data analytic research.