TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER AND KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE 47 46 The University is increasing facilities, funding and recognition for innovation to encourage staff and students to bring their ideas into the wider community. SETTING THE STAGE A HUB FOR INNOVATION The Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing One opened in December 2020 as a hub for innovation, exploration, outreach and collaboration, managed by the Faculty of Engineering. Occupying more than 2,400 square metres, it is a makerspace equipped with state-of-the-art facilities for supporting undergraduate students’ hands-on and experiential learning activities. As of autumn 2022, more than 2,300 students had completed induction and training programmes there. Students are already producing tangible outcomes. A student team from Innovation Wing One won the University Pitch Competition in Hong Kong on Global Grand Challenges in May 2022 for creating a digital sewage monitoring system to detect viruses that is small, cheap, scalable and can provide results in real time; they will be one of five teams representing China in the International Student Competition of the 5th Global Grand Challenges Summit. Innovation Wing also houses the Innovation Academy which connects innovators, runs activities such as workshops and pitching contests, offers funding schemes for student projects, and provides the platform InnoHub to connect students and staff from 10 faculties to collaborate on crossdisciplinary projects. Innovation Wing Two opened in December 2021 as an enabling platform for engineering researchers to collaborate with other researchers and professionals from various disciplines to tackle grand challenges and produce outputs that have significant impact in Hong Kong and global communities. The TechTalk series of forums and dialogues features researchers and postgraduate students sharing their research findings and insights on innovation-related topics. HKU innovations have also been presented through two exhibitions at Innovation Wing Two, one on Engineering for Better Living and the other on Digitalisation. Activities are expected to accelerate in the coming years with the growing encouragement of innovation at HKU as a whole. The Innovation Wing was made possible through a generous donation from Mr and Mrs Tam Wing Fan, who gifted HK$140 million to develop the facility and set up a fund to support the Innovation Academy. Professor Zhang explaining to the then Chief Executive Mrs Carrie Lam on the work of the Environmental Microbiome Engineering and Biotechnology Laboratory during her visit to HKU’s sewage monitoring facilities in February 2022. The sewage surveillance technology developed by the multidisciplinary team of Civil Engineering and Public Health has been incorporated into the whole control strategy against COVID-19 since December 2020. AWARD-WINNING INSIGHTS FROM SEWAGE Professor Zhang Tong, Chair Professor of Environmental Engineering in the Department of Civil Engineering, is an expert in extracting information from sewage that has proven to be beneficial not only to the environment but also human health. He has studied the environmental microbiome and wastewaterbased epidemiology for more than 15 years and he and his team have invented quantitative assays to detect microorganisms that can improve pollution control in wastewater treatment facilities. They have also developed comprehensive analytical methods for detecting emerging antibiotic-resistant genes in the environment, which is a silent pandemic worldwide. More recently, Professor Zhang used his expertise to design effective sewage surveillance systems that track the transmission of the COVID-19 virus and its variants in the community and reveal hidden cases. The systems were subsequently integrated into the Hong Kong government’s pandemiccontrol programme. For his achievements, Professor Zhang was awarded the HKU Innovator Award for 2021. “Understanding the microbial community is necessary if we want to design reactors with better performance and if we want to control the spread of pathogens in animals and the environment that may eventually infect humans,” he said. His most recent research has been looking at how to weaponise phages – viruses that infect bacteria – to help remove pollutants in wastewater. The findings were published in 2021 in Nature Communications. Learn more about Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing The HKU team won the University Pitch Competition on Global Grand Challenges 2021–22 with their project ‘PERfECT Viral Sewage Monitoring System’. The Inno Show offers a platform for students to create and showcase their own work outside classroom.
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