HKUST Genesis = 同創, Volume 12, Number 1

HONG KONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY VOL.12 NO.1 8 FEBRUARY 2001

HKUST is 10 years old!

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

President-Designate’s visit ... 2

Young inventor award ... 2

ISSCC (“Chip Olympics”) 2001 ... 3

Hong Kong sociologists meet at HKUST ... 3

10th Anniversary Photo Contest ... 4

Campus calendar ... 4

STOP PRESS: HKUST Business School in FT top 50 .. 3

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repare for fun times tinged with a touch of nostalgia. The “red bird” is ready for take off and will be flying high over many special events in the coming months.

While it seems a blink of an eye since the first students arrived on campus, this year brings the major milestone of the University’s 10th anniversary, with celebration definitely the order of the days ahead.

Thanks to the combined hard work and creative talent of faculty, students and staff— a HKUST hallmark from the pioneering days to current times—we have a whole series of world-class breakthroughs, contributions to society and happy moments to look back on. The 10th Anniversary Organizing Com-mittee has arranged a wide-ranging program extending from March to December 2001, to create an occasion as memorable as our first decade has been.

An opening ceremony and the launch of the 10th anniversary home page will propel the celebrations into the public eye, with the University’s success story captured in a com-memorative book and further illustrated in a photo exhibition that includes the winning entries from the 10th Anniversary Photo Contest. The pictures, all contributed by members of the HKUST community, provide a dynamic reflection of the HKUST spirit as

embodied by the people and places that make up campus life (see pages 4-5 inside for selected

winning entries).

Distinguished lecture series, roving exhibitions, a special Genesis column on long-serving staff and faculty members, and a birthday carnival are among the other activi-ties that lead up to the University’s official birthday on 2 October.

“I hope all in the University community will join in these events in one capacity or another,” said Loretta Pang, Director of Uni-versity Development and Public Affairs and chairperson of the Organizing Committee. “We have so much to celebrate and so much to share with society at large. People will be amazed at how much we have accomplished in the past 10 years.”

The red sundial was installed in 1991. Lord Wilson, the then Hong Kong Governor and the University’s

Chancellor, unveiled a commemorative plaque at the official Opening Ceremony on 10 October 1992.

10th Anniversary Logo

Linking all the celebrations will be the specially designed red bird logo, which bears a simple message: “The red bird is taking off.”

Inspired by the University’s popular red sundial, the red bird symbolizes the University. The number “10” displayed in perspec-tive view represents the University’s 10th anniversary and ten years of achievements. Graphically, it also suggests a runway from which the red bird is taking off.

The perspective lines enhance the visual interest of the logo, and suggest speed and depth. The full color version of the logo consists of three colors—red (the bird), silver (the runway) and navy blue (the slogan). While red is the natural choice for the “bird”, silver is used for the runway to convey a bright, hi-tech

and futuristic look.

As the logo shows, the 10th anniversary is only the beginning of excit-ing developments to come. From the foundations laid down in the first 10 years, we are now set to launch ourselves to even greater heights.

GENESIS, 8 February 2001 2

A

new award from Motorola—the

Motorola AccompliTM _Young Inven-tor Award—has inspired HKUST engineering students to come up with some innovative ideas for wireless communications. Three teams won special recognition at the presentation ceremony on 19 December.

First prize (and a handsome HK$100,000 scholarship) went to third-year computer sci-ence students Lilian Tam, William Wong and Michael Yau. Their winning proposal was a library gateway system that enables users to access university library information over wireless application protocol (WAP) phones. As well as book search, reservation and brows-ing functions, the system will also send users reminder messages before books are due back. The prototype WAP server for the HKUST Library is near completion, and the trio even-tually hope to extend the system to the other university libraries in Hong Kong.

Honorable mentions were awarded to electronic engineering MPhil student Gigi Chim for her design of a low specific

absorp-tion rate antenna for mobile communicaabsorp-tions; and to computer science MPhil students Pe-ter Kwan and William Lai for developing a se-cure wireless application for multi-user groups.

The Motorola AccompliTM _Young Inven-tor Award was initiated and sponsored by Motorola Personal Communica-tions Sector (Hong Kong), and co-or-ganized by HKUST. It is the first competition of its kind to be jointly promoted by a mobile phone manufac-turer and a university in Hong Kong.

Mr Cedric So, General Manager of Motorola’s Personal Communications Sector, said that Motorola was pleased to be able to help encourage the creativ-ity of HKUST students through this award: “The high quality of all of the students’ entries is an indicator of the great depth and breadth of Hong Kong’s scientific talent. Their original-ity and creativoriginal-ity made the decision of the judging panel very difficult.”

Award ignites students’ inventive spark

Young inventors Lilian Tam, William Wong and Michael Yau (from second left to right) receive a HK$100,000 scholarship from Mr Cedric So of Motorola (far left).

T

he University’s President-Designate, Prof Paul Ching-Wu Chu, and his wife May flew in from Houston on 10 December, three weeks after his appointment was announced, to meet HKUST’s Council members, faculty, staff and students. His five-day trip also included meetings with top gov-ernment officials and the local media, and tours of the University’s science and engineer-ing labs, and campus.

A first step in the “getting to know you” process that will continue between now and July, when he takes up the presidency, the visit has left both Prof Chu and the HKUST com-munity optimistic about the road ahead.

Prof Chu found the trip especially encour-aging on two fronts. Firstly, to find that the faculty and staff he met shared his vision to build HKUST’s reputation as a world-class in-stitution. He was also impressed by how seri-ously HKUST students took their studies and how concerned they are about the quality of university education.

“The success of an institution lies in its people—its faculty, staff and students. Being the president of a university is like being a cheerleader. It is also like being a coach,” he said, adding that he believed in winning sup-port for decisions through consultation.

Getting to know you

Feedback from members of the HKUST community he spoke with suggests their im-pressions were similarly favorable.

“The students feel Prof Chu will make an excellent president for HKUST. Not only be-cause of his capability and personality, but also for his international academic standing. This will help further HKUST's global status

“The Motorola Award has had a very posi-tive effect on the students. They are excited to have their work recognized and I believe some of them are now motivated to become entrepreneurs,” added project advisor Prof Samuel Chanson.

“The signals we get from Prof Chu and his willingness to ‘open his ears’ give us confi-dence about our future relationship with h i m , ” s ays H K U S T S t u d e n t s’ Un i o n President, Germaine Chan.

and help us consolidate our mission as a re-search university,” commented Germaine Chan, HKUST Students’ Union President.

“Having met with Prof Chu, we are reas-sured to find that, as well as being a great researcher, he also understands the practical issues of university administration,” said Lawrence Law, Director of the Information Technology Services Center.

Prof Chu certainly has the right creden-tials to make a dynamic and inspiring aca-demic leader. A distinguished physicist, he has won global recognition for his ground-breaking research in high-temperature superconductivity. He is also an experienced academic administrator and fundraiser who has helped build the University of Houston’s Texas Center for Superconductivity—of which he is founding Director—into the lar-gest university superconductivity research laboratory in the world.

That he has accepted the challenge of guiding HKUST, which he describes as Hong Kong’s “best-kept secret”, in its next phase of development is surely a vote of confidence we can all take pride in.

For more information on Prof Chu and his appointment, see the 20 November 2000 media re-lease at: http://www.ust.hk/%7Ewebopa/s1120.html

H

KUST electrical and electronic engineering postgraduates pre-sented their work alongside top industry researchers for the fourth time, and third year running, at the prestigious IEEE In-ternational Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC)—or “Chip Olympics”—in San Fran-cisco from 4 to 8 February.

It was a personal repeat performance for PhD candidate Vincent Cheung, who was in-vited to present his first paper last year while still an MPhil student. This year, he unveiled an integrated circuit (IC) that performs high-frequency, high-resolution analog-to-digital conversion on a single 1V (volt) battery. The chip will be a great help in reducing the size and extending the life of batteries in mobile phones and many other portable devices.

“At present, most analog ICs still need a supply voltage of at least 2.5V to achieve ac-ceptable performance. Our novel technique enables the IC to perform at least ten times faster than existing 1V designs and compara-bly to state-of-the-art designs that operate at much higher supply voltages,” explains Vincent.

“In a broader sense, analog circuit solu-tions like this also help push the progress on

HKUST Chip Olympians do it again

O

ver 100 sociologists and colleagues from related disciplines met at HKUST on 25 November to dis-cuss networking and “social capital” in Chi-nese society, and other hot topics in sociological research.

The occasion was the second Annual Meeting of the Hong Kong Sociological Association. It was one of the largest gath-erings of Hong Kong sociologists to date, and proved a great opportunity not only for talking about social capital but also for building it with other academics in the field. Highlights included a keynote speech from Prof Nan Lin, Vice-President of the American Sociological Association and Professor of So-ciology at Duke University, USA. Prof Lin is an authority on social networks, mental health and Chinese society. His talk examined three contending perspectives for social capital: so-cial networks, civic engagement and trust.

“It was a very stimulating conference academically. We’ve only really begun to ex-amine the role of social networks and social capital in Chinese society from a sociologi-cal standpoint in the last decade or so. And

we’re uncovering some fascinating insights into how our society works in the process,” says Prof Alvin So, Head of Social Science at HKUST. “It’s also very much an area of interdisciplinar y interest. We had criminologists, management scholars, so-cial psychologists, demographers, school educators and even some legal scholars attending”.

Prof Nan Lin looks at the truth behind the old adage “it’s not what you know but who you know that counts”.

Capital conference

HKUST makes FT top 50

HKUST’s School of Business and Man-agement is one of the top 50 business schools in the world according to the Fi-nancial Times MBA2001 rankings released on 22 January. For details, see HKUST media release http://www.ust.hk/ %7Ewebopa/s0122.html

Stop Press • Stop Press • Stop Press

the implementation of single-chip systems in

the near future. The potential commercial value of the invention is so significant that we are filing another US patent,” add Assistant P r o f e s s o r s H o w a r d Lu ong a n d Wing-Hung Ki, Vincent’s supervisors. A s k e d how it felt to have papers accepted two years in a row, V i n c e n t r e p l i e s : “Naturally, we were very

ex-cited to be invited back. Most of the research presented at the Chip Olympics comes out of the labs of top industry players like Bell, Lucent, Toshiba and Sony. Having papers pre-sented there for several consecutive years not only demonstrates HKUST’s state-of-the-art research capability but also serves as a good incentive for us to continue research in ana-log ICs.”

Fellow PhD candidate Zhaofeng Zhang was invited to give the only paper on narrowband applications (such as pagers and mobile phones) in the session on 3G (third-generation) mobile communications.

Although still very much at the basic re-search stage, his work successfully demon-strates the first fully integrated single-chip pager receiver, and resolves for the first time the problem of direct current (DC) offset and flicker noise in this type of IC.

“This breakthrough allows us to imple-ment small-size, low-cost ICs with the same capabilities as more complicated and expen-sive ICs. To the consumer, this will mean smaller and cheaper wireless communication products,” explains Zhaofeng.

“Our solution can be applied to a wide range of wireless receivers, including mobile phones and indoor wireless network products as well as pagers,” he adds.

“In terms of technological advancement, achieving a fully integrated pager is one step closer to realizing the long-awaited ‘system on a chip’ and the eventual convergence of ana-log and digital,” adds Zhaofeng’s supervisor, Associate Professor Jack Lau.

Chip Olympians Vin-cent Cheung (above c e n t e r w i t h Pro fs Howard Luong and Wing-Hung Ki) and Z h a o f e n g Z h a n g (center left with Prof Jack Lau and PhD can-didate Louis Tsui).

GENESIS, 8 February 2001 4

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T

he organizers of the 10th Anniversary Photo Contest are pleased to announce the winners of the competition. Held as a prelude to the 10th anniversary celebrations, the Contest took place from October to December 2000 and attracted over 180 entries from students, staff, faculty, alumni and their families in two categories: Campus Life/People/Events and Land-scape/Architecture. The top three winners in each category will be awarded camera equipment or accessories, and the five merit awardees will receive souvenirs. All winners will be presented a certificate of merit. The organizers would like to thank the sponsors—the Sony Corporation of HK Ltd-Hong Kong Marketing Company and Schmidt & Co (HK) Ltd—for their generous donations.

The 10th Anniversary Photo Contest was jointly organized by the Office of University Development and Public Affairs, Publishing Technology Center, HKUSTSU Film Society and HKUSTSU Photographic Society. Selected winning entries are presented here. To appreciate all the winning photos, visit PTC’s web site: www.ust.hk/ptc.

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Campus Calendar

Until 31 Mar

Ju Ming Sculpture Exhibition

LG7 Lawn 5 Feb 1 – 2 pm

Saxophone Karaoke Performance by Fukui Kenta

Exposition Hall 15 Feb 1 – 2 pm

Yue Opera Talk & Demonstration

Speaker: Tong Ying (in Putonghua) Exposition Hall

22 Feb 7 pm

HKUSTSU Band Society Annual Performance

Exposition Hall 26 Feb 1 – 2 pm

HKUST Arts Festival Opening*

Venue to be confirmed 26 Feb – 7 Mar

Transformation—Oil Painting Exhibition by Jackie Chau*

1–5 pm (Mon – Fri) 10 am – 6 pm (Sat & Sun)

Exposition Hall 27 Feb 1 – 2 pm

Cultural Ambassador 2000 “Les Six” Concert on Campus*

Exposition Hall

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Senior Editor Barbara Yang Editors Ann Galpin, Bosco Wong

Contributor Sally Course

Design & Production Publishing Technology Center Genesis is published by the Office of University Development and Public Affairs to keep

members of the HKUST community in touch with University news and views. The next issue of Genesis will be published on

7 March 2001. Contributions are welcome, but must be received at least three weeks before publication date either by fax at 2358-0537, or by

email to [email protected]. © 2001 by Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. All rights reserved.
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Dr David P Lawrence (HUMA) is happy to announce the birth of a son, Edward Matthew Lawrence, on 11 November 2000.

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