Awards and Achievements

The University works extensively in promoting and expanding opportunities for students to engage in research activities to strengthen their research capability and gain hands-on experience. In this issue, we are proud to introduce some of the high-quality work and awards received by our research postgraduate students, whose achievements shine across multiple disciplines in the international arena and local community.

Faculty of Architecture

HKU CIB Student Chapter Wins CIB Sebestyén Future Leaders Award 2026

The HKU CIB Student Chapter, a student-professional research group established at the Faculty of Architecture, has won the CIB Sebestyén Future Leaders Award 2026, with their proposal titled “Breaking Language Barriers in Knowledge Exchange: Expert-in-the-loop Deep Translation of CIB Video for Construction 5.0”.

The International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB) is a global association established in 1953 as an NGO on the initiative of the United Nations. The 2026 awardee Chapter at HKU consists of 223 research postgraduates at the Faculty of Architecture. The Chapter will receive a prize of €2,500 to support the project’s implementation.

The construction industry’s multicultural nature faces language barriers, limiting access to key resources such as CIB videos. To address this, the team developed a human-centred, expert-validated workflow using AI translation, terminology databases, and voice morphing to produce accurate, multilingual videos in Chinese, Thai, and Italian, expanding global access and improving safety and productivity.

Led by faculty from HKU's Department of Real Estate and Construction, the project is overseen by Professor Fan Xue, specialising in AI and city modelling, and Professor Isabelle Y. S. Chan, focusing on construction safety. PhD candidates Sou Han Chen and Jingqing Hong manage daily operations.

HKU PhD Candidate Chairs Panel at Architectural History Conference and Guest-Edits International Journal Issue

Jingliang Du, a PhD candidate in the Department of Architecture, represented the University at the 2026 SAH Annual Conference in Mexico City, a premier event in architectural history. He co-proposed and chaired the panel “The Other Actors: Nonhuman Agency in East Asian Built Environment,” which gathered international scholars to explore how nonhuman elements such as materials, ecological processes, and commodity flows have influenced landscapes and infrastructure across East Asia from the 19th century to today.

Using approaches such as material history, political ecology, and new materialism, the panel offered innovative perspectives beyond traditional human-centred narratives, highlighting regional and global connections in East Asian architecture. Jingliang’s role in organising and moderating the session provided valuable insights into emerging scholarly dialogues.

After the conference, Jingliang was invited to serve as a guest editor for Issue #3 of the Architecture + Infrastructures Working Papers Series (A+I WPS), focusing on “Architecture, Colonialism and East Asian Labour,” which examines the labour behind colonial-built environments. The publication, supported by Dinâmia’CET-Iscte and the European Research Council, is scheduled for release by late 2026. These activities demonstrate HKU’s postgraduate students’ expanding influence in shaping international scholarly conversations.

PhD Candidates Awarded 2026 Talent Development Scholarship for Scan-to-BIM Challenge Success

Siyuan Meng and Meng Sun, PhD candidates in the Department of Real Estate and Construction and members of iLab at HKU, have been awarded the 2026 Talent Development Scholarship under the Innovation, Science and Technology category. The scholarship recognises their outstanding performance in the Scan-to-BIM Challenge, held in conjunction with the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR). Meng and Sun are supervised by Professor Fan Xue and co-supervised by Professor Anthony Gar On Yeh and Professor Wilson Lu, respectively.

The challenge involves two tasks: creating 3D building models from scanned data (Scan-to-BIM 3D) and converting 3D point clouds into 2D architectural floor plans (Scan-to-BIM 2D). Given the complexity of real-world building scans, both tasks pose significant technical challenges. Meng and Sun’s team achieved the highest evaluation scores, winning dual awards. Their success demonstrates the potential of automated building reconstruction technology for applications such as facility management, digital twins, and smart cities, enhancing industry efficiency and decision-making.

This recognition highlights their innovation at the intersection of architecture, engineering, and AI. The Talent Development Scholarship honours students excelling in non-academic areas, and Meng and Sun’s achievement underscores their contributions to digital twin technology in construction. Building on this achievement, they will continue exploring intelligent methods for automated building reconstruction and digital management.

Overcoming Challenges in Urban Flood Mapping with AI

Fengyi Xu, a PhD student from the Department of Urban Planning and Design, is a lead author of a study on the novel LLM-guided framework for geo-localizing flood imagery. The study, titled “Enhancing Geo-Localization for Crowdsourced Flood Imagery via LLM-Guided Attention”, has been published in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems.

During severe urban floods, crowdsourced images from social media are crucial for emergency management. However, pinpointing their exact locations—geo-localisation—is difficult because floodwaters obscure visual cues such as roads and sidewalks, confounding traditional computer vision methods. To address this, the research team developed a novel Visual Place Recognition (VPR) framework that combines spatial data science with advanced AI. Unlike static models, this approach integrates large language models (LLMs) to analyse complex urban scenes and identify distinctive features. As shown in their workflow, the LLMs’ semantic reasoning generates dynamic attention maps that highlight key urban elements. These maps are incorporated into pre-trained vision architectures, producing enhanced descriptors that significantly improve localisation accuracy even under visual distortions caused by flooding.

This scalable, AI-driven tool enables faster, more reliable mapping of inundated areas, supporting urban planners and emergency responders. This methodology advances deep learning’s application in spatial analysis and demonstrates the practical value of adapting AI models for macro-environmental challenges.

PhD Graduate Wins 2026 IGU Young and Early Career Award in Geography

Dr Si Qiao—a PhD graduate (2022) of the Department of Urban Planning and Urban Design, supervised by Professor Anthony Gar On Yeh—received the 2026 IGU Young and Early Career Award in Geography from the International Geographical Union (IGU) at the 2026 IGU Regional Conference held in Istanbul, Türkiye in August 2026. Dr Qiao is currently an Assistant Professor in the Thrust of Urban Governance and Design of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou).

IGU, formally established in 1922, is an international scientific organisation devoted to advancing geographical research, education, and international collaboration. The IGU Young and Early Career Award in Geography recognises outstanding and innovative early-career geographers. Four scholars were selected internationally for the award in 2026.

Dr Qiao was recognised for her innovative contributions to GeoAI, urban and transport geography, and spatial justice. Her research develops data-driven and computational approaches in understanding human mobility and urban systems, with particular attention to safer and more equitable mobility. The award also recognises her international research collaborations and her efforts in demonstrating how geographical science can contribute to improving everyday mobility and quality of life across different communities.

Faculty of Arts

Exploring the History of Tourism in Hong Kong and Canton

At the 2026 Hong Kong Book Fair, Mr Koon-yiu Ma and MPhil candidate Wai Chung Cheung, Douglas, from HKU’s School of Chinese, published a monograph on the history of tourism in Hong Kong and Canton. The book explores how travellers from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century experienced and perceived their trips, contrasting past travel with today’s globalisation-driven convenience. The authors visualised travellers’ experience by using hundreds of illustrations in the book, which enable readers to ‘time travel’ through the changing landscapes of these cities.

The book’s regional focus on Hong Kong and Canton stems from their historical connection, with many tourists visiting both cities to experience Chinese culture—rural villages, temples, and landscapes—thanks to convenient transportation between the two cities. The book also traces visits by notable figures such as Einstein and Charlie Chaplin, who explored beaches, tried local delicacies, and engaged with Chinese traditions.

A distinctive aspect is its extensive collection of illustrations from personal archives and international libraries, offering a global perspective on regional tourism history. This work not only benefits academics but also guides modern tourists in understanding the evolution of Hong Kong and Canton as tourist destinations.

Click the link below to watch their book talk at the Hong Kong Book Fair on 20 July 2026, fostering connections between history and tourism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJmBiXkTrDI.

Celebrating Classical Chinese Poetry: A Young Poet’s Reflection and Creativity

In July 2026, Dan Wang, a PhD student in the School of Chinese, took part in the virtual forum “Seeds of a Thousand Springs: A Virtual Poetry Forum in Honour of the 102nd Anniversary of Prof. Chia-ying Yeh’s Birthday”. Jointly organised by Hong Kong Baptist University and Nankai University, the event gathered young poets to honour classical Chinese poetry and Yeh’s legacy.

During the forum, Dan presented an original regulated verse poem, "Mengjue" (夢覺), and reflected on poetry’s role in personal and intellectual life. Inspired by her engagement with "The Peony Pavilion" during the course of her study and research, and a subsequent dream, the poem explores themes of life, death, and the boundary between reality and dreams. “The opportunity to discuss both the poem and its creative background allowed me to reflect on the connections between literary study and poetic composition,” Dan said.

The organisers mentioned that selected works might be published, supporting the creative growth of emerging poets. The experience highlighted the enduring significance of Chinese poetry and its ongoing renewal.

HKU PhD Student Discusses Shanghai Opera and Film Collaborations at Cultural Forum

Danqi Lu, PhD candidate at the School of Chinese, is researching the intersection of Hong Kong cinema and Yue opera, focusing on male impersonator culture in Chinese theatre. Supported by HKU’s travel grant, she organised a panel and presented a paper at the AAS-in-Asia conference in Kathmandu, exploring the adaptive journey of Dragon Gate Inn from a 1967 wuxia film to Yue opera, highlighting how cultural memory, queer affect, and digital economies shape modern reinterpretations.

Danqi’s work emphasises how cross-gender performance and fan practices modernise traditional art for digital audiences. Her presentation received valuable feedback from scholars and was later published in Adaptation (Volume 19, Issue 2, August 2026: https://doi.org/10.1093/adaptation/apag016). In October 2025, Danqi was invited to present at the Shanghai–Hong Kong Cultural Forum, discussing the history of Shanghai opera troupes touring Hong Kong in the 1960s and their collaborations with film companies. Her insights into how opera and cinema intertwined during this period earned praise from scholars. Her related Chinese article, “The Jiangnan Imaginary in the Cold War,” was published in the Journal of Beijing Film Academy in May 2026.

Faculty of Engineering

HKU Researchers Honoured for Best Paper at International Civil Engineering Conference in South Korea

Junyang Shi, a PhD candidate in the Department of Civil Engineering, and his supervisor, Professor Wei Pan, were awarded the Best Overall Paper at the International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering (i3CE 2026). This conference was organised by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and held in Incheon, South Korea, June 14–17, 2026.

i3CE is a premier international conference on computing technologies for civil and construction engineering. The Best Overall Paper Award is the conference’s highest honour, given to a single paper ranked first among the 325 papers accepted from universities and research institutions worldwide. The team’s winning paper is titled "An AI-Driven Framework for Shear Wall Layout Optimization in High-Rise Concrete Modular Buildings", co-authored by Junyang Shi, Dr Yang Zhang, Yang Li, and Professor Wei Pan, from HKU’s Department of Civil Engineering and MiCLab. This paper develops a closed-loop AI framework that encodes modular standardisation into structural design through design-for-manufacture-and-assembly-based geometric layout synchronisation, enabling automated finite-element-analysis-validated optimisation for high-rise concrete modular buildings.

HKU Engineering Team Teaches Physics-Informed Neural Networks to Keep Up with the Speed of Ultrafast Ultrasound

Accurately mapping cardiovascular haemodynamics is vital for diagnosing vascular diseases. Ultrafast ultrasound captures blood flow data at up to 10,000 frames per second but faces challenges such as low contrast, noise, and artefacts. Using physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) to correct these errors is promising but impractical due to the massive data volume, which causes high memory use and long training times.

A research team led by Professor Wei-Ning Lee and her PhD student Haotian Guan from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering developed two innovative frameworks to address this. The first, SeqPINN, employs implicit Euler time discretisation, removing the time dimension from the input and reducing computational load. It preserves temporal information through weight initialisation from previous frames, enabling fast, per-frame adaptation. The second, SP-PINN, allows fully parallel training across all time frames by finding a robust initialisation through a Bayesian approach, treating sequential updates as samples from a posterior distribution.

Experiments with simulations, phantom models, and in vivo studies on volunteers showed that both methods achieve high accuracy while speeding up training by 10 to 30 times compared with traditional PINNs. This advancement enhances the potential for real-time, physics-based blood flow assessment in clinical settings. The work was published in IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11623399).

HKU Engineering Team Unveils the Physical Nature of Ultralarge Elasticity in Covalent Semiconductors

Research by members of the HKU Nanomechanics Laboratory—Professor Yang Lu, PhD student Jiayi Li, and Dr Heyi Wang—has achieved a breakthrough by uncovering the microscopic physical nature of ultralarge elasticity in covalent semiconductors such as silicon and diamond. This discovery provides crucial quantitative guidance for deep elastic strain engineering (DESE), paving the way for the development of next-generation electronic, optoelectronic, and quantum devices.

Despite the immense potential of DESE, the underlying deformation mechanisms of these covalent crystals have long remained elusive. The research team became the first to directly observe the pure lattice evolution of single-crystalline silicon and diamond under tension at the atomic scale. By precisely quantifying the resulting lattice strains, they successfully bridged macroscopic mechanical strain with microscopic lattice strain, establishing a solid physical foundation for the intelligent design of advanced semiconductor devices.

The research findings were recently published in the premier physics journal Physical Review Letters under the title "Quantifying Lattice Strains in Elastically Deformed Covalent Crystals" (https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/3pvs-gdp8).

(This article is adapted from https://www.hku.hk/press/press-releases/detail/29306.html.)

HKU Musketeers Foundation Institute of Data Science

Jiahang Cao Awarded the Prestigious Tencent Hunyuan Scholarship

Jiahang Cao, a Year 1 PhD student at The Musketeers Foundation Institute of Data Science (HKU IDS), has been selected for the 2026 Chinese Institute of Electronics – Tencent Doctoral Research Incentive Project for Hunyuan Large Models. Jiahang is one of only 44 doctoral students selected from 329 applications nationwide, representing an acceptance rate of approximately 13%. He is also one of three awardees from HKU included in the official selection results.

Supervised by Professor Andrew Luo and Professor Ping Luo at HKU IDS, Jiahang conducts research in robot learning, deep generative models, and cognitive-inspired models. His work explores how generative modelling and principles of human cognition can improve machine perception, language understanding, and decision-making in complex environments.

Jointly initiated by the Chinese Institute of Electronics and Tencent, the programme supports doctoral students conducting research in large-model-related technologies. Each selected student will receive RMB 100,000 in research funding, together with access to research practice platforms and other forms of academic support.

Xubin Ren Recognised for Innovation in Practical AI Systems

Xubin Ren, a Year 3 PhD candidate at HKU IDS, has been selected for the 2025 “AI25 AI Innovation Pioneers Under 25” list. Jointly initiated by Sequoia China and MIT Technology Review China, AI25 recognises young researchers, engineers, open-source contributors, and entrepreneurs under the age of 25 who are contributing to the development and application of artificial intelligence (AI).

Supervised by Professor Chao Huang at IDS, Xubin conducts research across large language models, recommender systems, retrieval-augmented generation, multimodal understanding, and autonomous agents. His work examines how advances in AI models can be translated into practical, scalable systems that support real-world users and workflows. Xubin is also the creator and maintainer of nanobot, an open-source lightweight personal AI agent.

Xubin’s current work is extending from the application of large language models in recommendation and retrieval systems towards the development of next-generation agent runtimes and infrastructure. Through lightweight architecture, open-source collaboration, and practical workflow validation, he aims to advance AI agents beyond conversational interfaces towards systems capable of understanding context, using tools, executing tasks, and supporting sustained human–AI collaboration.

LKS Faculty of Medicine

Rethinking Osteoporosis Screening from the Inside Out

Professor William Weijia Lu and his two PhD students, Jianjun Wu and Mian Huang, from the Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, have recently published the results of their two studies in collaboration with Chinese Mainland research teams, which together push forward the use of quantitative computed tomography (QCT) for osteoporosis risk assessment.

Published in Osteoporosis International, the first study tackles a long-standing question: Does the fat that accumulates inside skeletal muscle contribute to bone deterioration independently of body weight or average bone density? Conventional screening for osteoporosis relies on bone mineral density (BMD), but BMD alone often fails to identify people who go on to fracture. The team hypothesised that ectopic fat—particularly fat infiltrated within muscle—might offer a complementary signal of bone quality that density-based measures miss. In a cohort of 327 elderly, the research team found that muscle fat carries information about localised bone health that conventional scans miss, pointing to it as a potential new biomarker for early osteoporosis risk.

The second study, published in Academic Radiology, addresses a practical bottleneck on the imaging side. Existing QCT models are calibrated at 120 kVp, but modern low-dose chest CTs increasingly use 100 kVp to minimise radiation. Applying a 120 kVp calibration to 100 kVp data introduces substantial bias—exactly when they want opportunistic osteoporosis screening to work. Their 00 kVp-calibrated model cuts BMD measurement error to roughly one-sixth of the conventional approach, at a dose comparable to a chest X-ray, with around 90% agreement with the clinical standard. The practical upshot: every routine low-dose chest CT can now double as a quantitative bone-density exam: no extra visit, no extra radiation, no extra equipment.

Taken together, these two studies sketch a near-term future in which osteoporosis screening piggybacks on CT scans patients are already receiving: more nuanced, more sensitive, and almost free. The research team is now extending this work to multi-centre cohorts and to longitudinal follow-up, to test whether these imaging biomarkers can predict who goes on to fracture.

Nursing PhD Candidate Wins Best Presentation Award at the 2026 Yonsei International Nursing Conference

Yangxi Huang—a final-year PhD candidate at the School of Nursing, LKS Faculty of Medicine, supervised by Professor Pui Hing Chau and Professor Jojo Yan Yan Kwok—received the Best Presentation Award at the 2026 Yonsei International Nursing Conference in Seoul. Held on August 20-21, the conference celebrated the College of Nursing’s 120th anniversary under the theme “Legacy of 120 Years: Honouring the Past, Paving the Future,” and gathered nursing researchers, educators, and clinicians from Korea and abroad.

Yangxi’s presentation, titled “Prevalence, Risk Factors, and Lived Experiences of Insomnia Among Cancer Caregivers: A Mixed-Methods Study,” showcased her research on 427 cancer caregivers in Hainan, China. Combining surveys and in-depth interviews with 20 caregivers, her study explored insomnia prevalence, associated factors, and preferred support options. The findings highlight the significant burden of insomnia among caregivers and inform the development of a WeChat mini-programme offering self-help cognitive behavioural therapy, supported by weekly nurse contact, to improve sleep and wellbeing.

Expressing gratitude, Yangxi thanked her supervisors, the School of Nursing, and the caregivers and clinical teams in Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland who contributed to her research. Attendance was supported by the University’s Conference Support for Research Postgraduate Students scheme.

Psychiatry PhD Candidate Awarded the 2025/26 For Our Future Innovation and Technology Scholarship

Harry Kam Hung Tsui, a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychiatry, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, has been awarded the 2025/26 For Our Future Innovation and Technology Scholarship by the Greater Bay Area Homeland Youth Community Foundation. The scholarship recognises PhD students whose research shows potential for societal impact, considering achievements, community engagement, leadership, and innovation. Ten students from seven Hong Kong institutions will receive HK$80,000 each.

Harry’s research focuses on social cognition and mentalising in psychosis, integrating psychiatry, psychology, and computational science. His work employs experimental psychology, eye-tracking, computational modelling, and evidence synthesis. He has also contributed to digital psychiatry research, utilising electronic health records and natural language processing to study mental health in real-world clinical settings.

Beyond academia, Harry actively participates in community mental health initiatives, exploring how technology can enhance access to mental health information and support. These experiences have fuelled his passion for translating research into practical applications that address societal needs.

The scholarship aims to foster innovation and technological development in Hong Kong. For Harry, it offers encouragement and an opportunity to further explore how digital technologies and scientific research can improve mental healthcare delivery, bridging rigorous inquiry with real-world impact.

School of Computing and Data Science

HKU Pioneers "RoboDojo": The First Hong Kong-Led Unified Benchmark for Embodied AI, Setting New Global Standards for Robot Reliability

HKU Multimedia Laboratory (MMLab) has initiated RoboDojo, the first Hong Kong-led benchmark to unify simulation and standardised real-robot evaluation for embodied AI.

Co-initiated by Professor Ping Luo, Associate Director (AI Research and Tech Transfer) of the HKU School of Computing and Data Science (CDS), and his PhD student Tianxing Chen, RoboDojo brings together researchers from nearly 20 leading universities worldwide, including UC Berkeley and Tsinghua University.

RoboDojo seamlessly integrates simulation-based evaluation, standardised physical robot testing, and policy benchmarking under a single, cohesive framework. Since its launch, RoboDojo has garnered widespread acclaim from both academia and industry globally. RoboDojo helps move embodied AI beyond impressive demos towards progress that can be measured, compared, and trusted—supporting safer and more reliable robots for real-world applications.

(This article is adapted from https://www.hku.hk/press/press-releases/detail/29297.html.)

Faculty of Science

PhD Student Awarded International Grant to Study Tropical Forest Insects

Kit Wah Kit Lee, a PhD candidate in the Global Change and Tropical Conservation Lab in the School of Biological Sciences, has been awarded a prestigious international grant to investigate potential declines in tropical forest insects. Her study resamples a community of butterflies originally surveyed in 1999 from the remote forests of northern Borneo. By returning to the exact same sites and using identical methods, she will quantify how butterfly abundance and community composition have changed after nearly three decades, and test whether any shifts can be linked to climate change.

Remarkably, she is one of only 15 postgraduate students worldwide to receive the 2026 Seed Research Grant from the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC). The award will support part of her research costs at the Danum Valley Research Centre, where she will spend three months collecting data in the rainforest. This project not only advances understanding of insect population trends in tropical ecosystems but also highlights the importance of long-term ecological monitoring in addressing climate change impacts.

Faculty of Social Sciences

HKU Psychology PhD Candidate Recognised for Depression and Inflammation Research at PNIRS 2026

Rachel Run Jin, a final-year PhD candidate supervised by Professor Tatia Lee at the Department of Psychology, presented her research on “Heterogeneity in Depressive Symptom Profiles and Its Association with Inflammation” at the 2026 PNIRS Annual Meeting in New Orleans, USA. Her study found that different depressive symptom profiles in middle-aged to older adults are linked to distinct inflammatory signatures, with elevated inflammatory markers in those with somatic and depressive profiles. These results emphasise the importance of considering inflammation in understanding depression's heterogeneity and could help in stratifying at-risk individuals for targeted interventions.

Rachel was awarded the exclusive Elsevier Scholarship for International Participation, recognising her abstract among global submissions. She expressed that this recognition is motivating, highlighting the potential of interdisciplinary and international collaboration in addressing mental health challenges. She also serves as a trainee member on PNIRS’s Communication and Access Committees, aiming to advance translational research in psychoneuroimmunology.

Grateful for her experience at HKU, Rachel thanked Professor Lee, her lab mates, HKU staff, and funding sources including the HKU Presidential PhD Scholarship and Hong Kong PhD Fellowship, which supported her throughout her doctoral journey.

HKU Social Work PhD Student Awarded at ADEC 2026 for Suicide Bereavement Research

Wing Kai Cheung (Kai), a part-time PhD student from the Department of Social Work and Social Administration, was awarded the Richard Kalish Graduate Student Paper Award at the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) 2026 Annual Conference held in Baltimore, USA. ADEC is one of the first interdisciplinary organisations in the field of dying, death, and bereavement, dedicated to promoting excellence and recognising diversity in death education, care of the dying, grief counselling, and research in thanatology.

The award is presented to an outstanding graduate paper addressing topics related to dying, death, loss and bereavement. The award-winning paper, “Perception rather than Enactment: A Qualitative Study on Stigma and Self-stigma of Persons Bereaved by Suicide”, discussed the phenomenon of stigma and self-stigma experienced by persons bereaved by suicide and proposed elements for a conceptual framework of stigma in the context of suicide bereavement. Kai was invited to give a poster presentation at the Conference.

Kai expressed heartfelt gratitude to his supervisors Professor Amy Chow and Professor Sally Cao, whose guidance and support were instrumental in making this achievement possible. He also shared his hope that his work will ignite further research in this underexplored area, provide insights towards building a more structured framework, and ultimately contribute to the broader pursuit of an anti-stigma society.

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