Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Both KTH and HKUST embrace the concept of strategic partnership with a selected number of key international players, where both KTH and HKUST are strategic partners of their choice. The partnership aims to boost joint publications, enhanced collaborations among researchers, student exchange as well as collaboration with the society at large.

Hongkong University of Science and Technology in short

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) is a research university established in 1991. Despite its short history, HKUST is one of the region's most outstanding universities. It is ranked as one of the world's 50 best universities and top 15 in the world within science and engineering. HKUST also has a prominent business school as well as a humanities faculty. The university is located on the Clearwater Bay peninsula, with a view of the Hong Kong islands. More than 11,000 students study in the university of which around 4,000 students are international.

History of the partnership

KTH and HKUST have had good cooperation among several researchers since HKUST was established in 1991. A number of visits in the late 1990s and early 2000s led to a popular student exchange programme. In 2014, HKUST launched a strategic partnership programme with ten selected universities to which they invited KTH as a partner. A delegation from KTH with then President Peter Gudmundson visited HKUST to discuss the strategic partnership which was followed by the signing of an agreement in 2015.

3rd of April 2019 a delegation from KTH with Vice President Stefan Östlund, Vice Dean of Faculty Per Berglund, Professor Hans Hebert, Ms Christina Murray and Ms Yingfang He visitied HKUST President Wei Shyy and collegues where the following topics was discussed: student exchange, faculty exchange, sabbaticals and short visits, the establishment of Guangzhou South and possible seed funding, summer schools, joint degrees, Sustech and KTH Innovation Brighter Program.

At the moment the above topics are something that KTH and HKUST are still working on in order to deepen our strategic partership.

Research collaboration

There have long been different forms of cooperation in mathematics, materials science, IT and electronics between the universities. These co-operation has led to an increased number of co-publication of scientific articles. Over the past six years, KTH and HKUST have published a total of 159 joint scientific articles.

Existing academic collaborations

Examples of existing academic collaborations between HKUST and KTH.

• Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBME) at HKUST through Professor Zhengtang Luo and Professor Carina Lagergren at KTH within graphene membranes.
• Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at HKUST through Professor Pan Hui and Professor Gunnar Karlsson and Professor Sonja Buchegger at KTH within EU ICT and social networking.
• Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering (ECE) at HKUST through Professor Ling Shi and Professor Karl H Johansson at KTH within networked control systems and remote state estimation.
• Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering (ECE) at HKUST through Professor Pascale Fung and Professor Joakim Gustavsson at KTH within Robotics.

Funding for joint research projects

The cooperation provides funding for joint research projects. The following six projects have received financial support.

• Big Data System: Professor Jiang Xu (HKUST), Professor Ahmed Hemani (KTH) and Professor Zhonghai Lu (KTH) for 36 months.
• Robotic Manipulation-Representation and Optimization (RoMRO): Professor Michael Wang (HKUST), Professor Kaiyu Hang (HKUST), Professor Danica Kragic (KTH) and Florian T. Pokorny (KTH) for 36 months.
• Dynamic AIE Systems with Adaptive Features for Smart Optical Applications: Professor Ben Zhong Tang (HKUST), Professor Mingdi Yan (KTH) and Professor Olof Ramström (KTH) for 36 months.
• Resource Allocation in Cyber-Physical Systems: Professor Ling Shi (HKUST), Professor Li Qiu (HKUST) and Professor Karl H. Johansson (KTH) for 36 months.
• Evaluation of the scalability of opportunistic networking protocols and their applicability in natural disaster cases with minimal support of fixed infrastructure: Professor Pan Hui (HKUST) and Professor Gunnar Karlsson (KTH) for 24 months.
• Theoretical and experimental investigation of synthetic spin orbit coupling in ultracold quantum gases: Professor Gyu-Boong Jo (HKUST) and Professor Egor Babaev (KTH) for 24 months.

Educational collaboration

KTH and HKUST have a large student exchange. Each year, KTH receives 18 students from HKUST who study a semester in Stockholm and offer as many KTH students the opportunity to study a semester in Hong Kong. There are discussions about a joint dual-degree programme, where KTH students are allowed to study for a master's degree and HKUST students are offered a 3 + 2 program.

Public engagement

KTH has signed an agreement with Hong Kong's Smart City Consortium (SCC) for cooperations on Hong Kong's urban development. KTH has a good network of contacts with Swedish companies active in Hong Kong, which also participates in the development of city projects. Hong Kong's smart city program is an area in which KTH cooperates with both Hong Kong city, Swedish companies and HKUST. Another collaboration exists with Hong Kong Science Park, which offers Swedish startups an attractive landing platform, where collaboration with HKUST provides access to its attractive network of contacts. KTH also have contacts with MTR, which is based in Hong Kong.

Contact