Hong Kong’s Chinese University sets up 6 labs under umbrella of InnoHK to drive discoveries in range of areas, from nanobot surgery to automated logistics
- At one facility backed by HK$470 million in funding, professors are combining an MRI machine, CT scanners and robotic arms to assist in surgeries
- Another lab is using machine learning and AI to help streamline clothing manufacturing, with one goal incorporating sensors to turn body language into speech
A Hong Kong university has set up six research centres to drive innovation across a wide range of fields, from carrying out surgery via robots to giving the speech impaired a new way to communicate and even streamlining logistics with new automated processes.
Led by scientists from Chinese University and formed under the government’s InnoHK research programme at the Science Park at Pak Shek Kok, the labs have received hundreds of millions of Hong Kong dollars each in public funding.
University pro-vice-chancellor Professor Sham Mei-har said on Monday the labs aimed to test cutting-edge products that could be marketed to help solve manpower shortages at cargo ports and improve surgical precision.
“Using our existing knowledge base, the labs can elevate research to practical uses and is the biggest step that the InnoHK Centres are taking,” Sham said during a media tour. “It can solve problems in medicine and surgery, logistics, speech impediments or even tailor-make clothing.”
In addition to the scientists based in Hong Kong, the labs have joined up with leading universities across the world, including Imperial College in London and the college of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
