Jack first obtained his BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley. He subsequently worked at Hewlett Packard, Schlumberger, and a startup in the Silicon Valley.

In 1994, Jack completed his doctorate study in Electronic Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and became the HKUST’s first PhD graduate. Jack then continued his post-doctoral research at Stanford University. In 1998, Jack returned to the Faculty of Electronic Engineering of HKUST and received his tenure.

Jack is a holder of multiple invention patents, including the first patent to be awarded to the School of Engineering at HKUST, and has published at leading IEEE journals and conferences.

In 1999, Jack started Perception Digital, a company providing digital signal processor-based turn-key solutions to several Fortune 500 companies and technology leaders. Perception Digital eventually went public on the main board at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Jack also served as the Chairman and CEO of the company.

He had also started and ran as the Managing Director of a banking software company, which was eventually absorbed by a local bank. Products include securities trading platform, workflow, and other essential local banking IT needs.

Jack completed his Kellogg-HKUST EMBA program in 2010.

He is passionate in teaching and education. He was an invited Professor about Digital Transformations at Skolkovo School of Management in Moscow and has taught similar subject in executive education in Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Jack had also served on the Board as Independent Director on several Hong Kong listed company and SemiLEDs (Nasdaq stock code:  LEDS). On LEDS, he was on the audit committee of the Board.

Jack is a recipient of the 10 Most Outstanding Young Persons in Hong Kong (2000), Young Industrialist Award (2005), and Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year 2009 China award. In 2010, he was bestowed an Honorary Fellowship at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Jack also serves as a member of several committees in Hong Kong, such as the HKSAR Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, Appeal Tribunal Panel of Planning and Lands Branch – HKSAR Development Bureau, HKSAR Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF) Advisory Committee and Enterprise Support Scheme (ESS) Assessment Panel, Innovation Technology Venture Fund (ITVF) Panel and the Green Tech Fund of the Environmental Protection Department.

Jack is now a Member of the Council of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is a former Chairman of the International Advancement and Outreach Committee of the Council, a member of the Audit Committee, a member of the HKUST Guangzhou Campus Working Group, Chairman of the Search Committee for the Vice President of Research and Development. He was also the Vice-Chairman of the Knowledge Transfer Committee of the Council. He was a member of the Search Committees for the President of the HKUST.

Jack is currently the Chairman of Swanland.AI, investing in and nurturing a wide range of startups, including intelligence design, smart home, green technology, insurance tech, and many more. As a hobby, he is active in publishing his technology thoughts on his blog, and various technology implementations on Medium.com. 

A sample collection of videos related can be found here.

Jack is also passionate in teaching.  He teaches at both the Business School and the Engineering School. His courses include Digital Transformation, Entrepreneurship, Design Thinking, and A.I. for FinTech.

Recreationally, he is a certified Yoga instructor, and an avid golfer.

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People Type
People Position
Email
eejlau@ust.hk
Area
Consumer Electronics
Artificial Intelligence
Digital Business Transformation
Surname
LAU

BSc(ISD) student project supported by SOCAM Development Ltd. won Gold Award of ASMPT Technology Award 2023

News 13 Jul 2023

Our undergraduate students Alphor CHEUNG Ho-Hin, Alan PANG Yu-Yin, Evan MA Sze-Long, Will LIU Pak-Hin and Benny SZE Chung-Lam have won the Gold Award of ASMPT Technology Award 2023, with their Final Year Project titled “Situational Awareness Location Transponder (SALT): A Phase Difference of Arrival (PDOA)-based System for Enhancing Construction Safety”, supervised by Prof. TSUI Chi-Ying and Dr. Jac LEUNG.

The team applied the Design Thinking approach to study the hazards in construction sites and construction practices. During the development of SALT, the team worked closely with engineers and safety managers from SOCAM Development Ltd. to identify the problems and design constraints through multiple rounds of interviews, site observations, and validation. SALT is a safety solution for construction sites that uses Bluetooth, Ultra-Wideband (UWB) and Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) sensing technologies to provide real-time positioning and trajectory, reducing accidents that involve heavy machinery and workers.

SALT includes tags that are placed on workers and machinery, anchors that are fixed in certain locations, and displays that give alerts and warnings. The tags and anchors use UWB technology to accurately locate their positions, while Bluetooth allows for communication over long distances. The tags also have IMUs that determine the orientation of machinery, which provides more information. This comprehensive system is designed to address the practical limitations of construction sites.

Please join us to congratulate our talented students for their hard work and dedication!

Chinachem – ISD Talk Series: From Zero Carbon Building to Carbon Neutral Hong Kong

Events 17 Apr 2023
Events Date17 April 2023 Events07:00pm - 08:00pm EventsLT-F (near lift 25-26), 1/F, Academic Building, HKUST

This is about the journey of an architect who participated in the integration of sustainable design in the built environment, including the pioneering project Zero Carbon Building completed in 2012 in Hong Kong, and then served as the Secretary for the Environment, HKSAR, between 2012-22. During his 10-year tenure in the Government, Wong led a number of sustainability policy blueprints on climate actions, energy saving, clean air, popularisation of electric vehicles, waste management, and biodiversity, leading Hong Kong towards carbon neutrality before 2050.

Chinachem – ISD Talk Series: Treehouse architecture

Events 27 Mar 2023
Events Date27 March 2023 Events07:00pm - 08:30pm EventsLT-K (near lift 31-32), 2/F, Academic Building, HKUST

Treehouse architecture - Childhood Imaginaries to Incumbent Eco-Realities. The Future of Work is Changing - Are you ready?

BSc(ISD) student won 2023 Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program Award

News 19 May 2023

Our student of BSc in Integrative Systems and Design (ISD), Ms. CHEN Siyu, Cici won the First Runner-up award, 2023 Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program Award.

The research topic Cici working on is related to Deep Learning for Ophthalmology Image Analysis  and her project is about Image Quality-aware Diagnosis via Meta-knowledge Co-embedding.

Cici and her team reckoned that deep learning method application on high-quality (HQ) medical images have shown promising results, however, medical images usually suffer from image degradations leading to a totally different situations compared to HQ images. In clinical practices, researchers intend to filter out low-quality (LQ) images to increase the performance of deep learning method, ignoring the significant value of those LQ images. In this work, she and her team raised the problem of Image Quality-aware Diagnosis (IQAD) aiming to use LQ images and image quality labels to achieve better performance by utilizing medical images. They proposed a new method, noted as Meta-knowledge Co-embedding Network (MKCNet) for this problem, outperforming other methods.

The awarded paper has also been accepted by the top-tier conference IEEE/CVF Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 2023. Please join us to congratulate Cici for her great job.

 

Chinachem - ISD Talk Series: TINDAKAN, MAKSUD, URGENSI

Events 28 Feb 2023
Events Date28 February 2023 Events6:00pm - 7:30pm EventsLT-G (near lift 25-26), Academic Building, HKUST

TINDAKAN, MAKSUD, URGENSI - Action, Agency, Urgency, Stories of Crazy Chefs from Indonesia and Other efforts in Sustainability.

This is a story of how a hospitality business in Indonesia breaks down the big concept of sustainability into the daily grind of their business, and at the heart of this journey is its kitchen.

The speakers shared the passion, the work, the fruits, the struggles and what they believe is needed to create consumption culture that supports sustainability.

Dr. Rob Scharff is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Integrative Systems and Design of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Bioinspired Soft Robotics group at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT). Dr. Scharff obtained his Ph.D. degree at the department of Design Engineering from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in 2021 and received his M.Sc. degree in Integrated Product Design from the same institute. His research focuses on soft robotics, with an emphasis on the integrated design and manufacturing of bioinspired soft robots with proprioception and tactile sensing capabilities.

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People Position
Email
scharffrbn@ust.hk
Area
Soft Robotics
Bioinspired Robotics
Additive Manufacturing
Phone
Location
Rm 5591D
Surname
SCHARFF

UG Admission: Join ISD via SNDAS/SAAS

News 28 Nov 2022

Division of Integrative Systems and Design (ISD) is one of the first divisions recruited students from SNDAS once introduced by the Education Bureau for the 2022/23 entry.

At HKUST, we celebrate diversity and recognize the different talents our students bring to the university community. Apart from academic results, students with outstanding performance in extra-curricular activities would receive special admission consideration.

SNDAS (More information)

School Nominations Direct Admission Scheme (SNDAS) is a school nominations scheme introduced by the Education Bureau (EDB) and takes effect from the 2022/23 entry. SNDAS aims at recognising the talent of local students that could not be fully assessed by the HKDSE.

SAAS (More information)

SAAS applicants would receive special admissions consideration based on their sport achievements. Successful applicants would enjoy scholarships, living allowance, our full support and great flexibility in their study arrangements, allowing them to chase their sporting and academic goals at the same time.

Watch below video and article to understand more from our students’ perspective.

Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFFcBxiNJ30

Read more: https://topick.hket.com/article/3407383/%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF%E7%A7%91%E6%8A%80%E5%A4%A7%E5%AD%B8%E5%9F%B9%E9%A4%8A%E5%A4%9A%E5%85%83%E7%B2%BE%E8%8B%B1%E3%80%80%E7%99%BC%E5%B1%95%E9%9D%9E%E5%AD%B8%E8%A1%93%E6%BD%9B%E8%83%BD?r=cpsdlc

ISD Experience Day Workshop Series - Experiencing Eco Design

Events 14 Jan 2023
Events Date14 January 2023 Events09:30 (HKT) EventsISDWorks!

Our workshop: Experiencing Eco-design will be held on 14 January 2023 (Sat), which is one of the events in ISD experience Day Workshop Series.

If you wish to join the workshop, please register via the QR code or this link by 9 January 2023 (Mon):
https://forms.office.com/r/W2FFXCLzYR

An email confirmation will be sent to you once your reservation is confirmed.

If you have any enquiry, please do not hesitate to contact us at isd@ust.hk or 3469 2723.

Fabrication of Nanomaterials and Compounds through Laser Ablation in Liquid

Events 02 Dec 2022
Events Date02 December 2022 Events14:00 (HKT) EventsOnline

Laser ablation in liquid (LAL) can create a microenvironment with transient extreme high temperature and pressure and provide an ultrafast quenching rate, which makes it a general method to fabricate metastable nanomaterials or efficiently synthesize compounds.