Talk Series on Emerging Technologies
Introduction
Emerging technologies such as quantum engineering, genome editing, AI and renewable energy are set to have profound impacts on our daily lives, our planet, and our way of understanding nature and even ourselves. To inform high school students and teachers about the latest technologies and to prepare our next generations for the opportunities and challenges ahead of us, YASHK and The Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education (HKAGE) with the support from Education Bureau (EDB) co-organised the “Talk Series on Emerging Technologies — Science, Opportunities and Challenges".
In this series, there are thematic sessions, including Genome Editing, Quantum Materials, AI, Climate Change. The series have begun since July 2019. Stay tuned with us for the latest talk schedule.
Introduction
The main goal in drug discovery is to identify and develop chemical molecules that can tightly but selectively bind to target protein receptors to inhibit their functions. Therefore, accurate predictions of “tightness” (free energies) and “pose” (orientation of binding) of protein-ligand binding is of central importance for in-silico drug design aided by computers. “In-silico” drug design refers to the use of sophisticated computer modeling and recently Artificially Intelligence (AI) techniques, which greatly reduces the need for expensive lab testing. In this talk, we will discuss how recent breakthroughs in computational approaches particularly AI-driven techniques that revolutionizes the drug discovery processes.
Poster
Download the promotional Poster (pdf - 3MB)
The Speakers
Prof Xuhui HUANG, Professor, Department of Chemistry, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Prof Hongzhe SUN, Professor, Department of Chemistry, The University of Hong Kong
Introduction
Our observed universe is 14 billion years old now. If we compress these 14 billion years to one day, the whole human history corresponds to no more than a second in that day. What happened in the evolution history of the universe? How the universe turns into the current form from the infant universe? How life arises in the universe?
The talk will start from the origin of the universe – hot big bang cosmology and cover topics including the inflationary universe, big bang nucleosynthesis, the first light, large scale structure of the universe, the formation of galaxies and the birth of stars and planets.
Poster
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The Speakers
Dr Hua-Bai LI, Associate Professor, Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Dr Yi WANG, Associate Professor, Department of Physics, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Introduction
In this talk, the speakers will present and discuss the latest scientific and technological
development, with sustainability thinking at its core:
How shall we integrate knowledge and skills from physics to biology to machine
learning, to understand and even predict the earth's environment?
How shall we be innovative and create new solutions for clean energy and sustainable
development in urban cities and developing countries at large?
Poster
Download the promotional Poster (pdf - 1.0 MB)
The Speakers
Dr Amos Tai, Associate Professor, Earth System Science Programme, Faculty of Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Dr Yi-Chun Lu, Associate Professor, Mechanical & Automation Engineering The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Introduction
How does Facebook recognize your face in a photo? How does Siri understand and answer your questions? How does Netflix recommend movies to you? How did AlphaGo beat the world Go champion? The answer is deep learning. Deep learning is a field of artificial intelligence, which uses mathematical models, inspired by the human brain, to automatically learn to recognize complex patterns from empirical data, such as text and web documents, images, videos, sound, sensor-data, and beyond.
This talk will give an introduction to deep learning and its recent advances within the context of real-world applications in computer vision, speech recognition, game AI players, and recommender systems. We will also discuss challenges (explainability, dataset bias, and adversarial examples) and ethical issues (privacy and accountability), as well as future opportunities.
Poster
Download the promotional Poster (pdf - 1.7 MB)
PowePoint
Download the PowerPoint slides (pdf - 124 MB)
The Speakers
Dr Cong Wang, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong
Dr Antoni Bert Chan, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong
Introduction
In recent years, many big high-tech companies such as Google, Intel, IBM, Microsoft and Tencent are racing to build quantum computers, which make use of the principles of quantum mechanics to perform computations. If successful, we will be able to perform certain calculations which are impossible for classical computers to compute.
In this lecture, we will review some important principles of quantum mechanics and explain how to use these principles to speed up calculations. Recent progress in the building of quantum computers will be discussed.
In the second part of the lecture, we will further discuss the applications of quantum materials in nanoscale transistors and energy harvesting.
Poster
Download the promotional Poster (pdf - 2.97 MB)
The Speakers
Dr Vic Law, Dr. Tai-chin Lo Associate Professor of Science and Department of Physics, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
He is one of the founding members of The Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences with research interest in condensed matter theory, particularly in superconductors and other quantum materials.
Dr Johnny Ho, Associate Professor of Department of Materials Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong.
He is one of the founding members of The Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences with research interest in nanoengineering and materials science.
Introduction
An organism’s genome is the instruction manual that dictates a large part of the organism’s biological characteristics and functions. Genome editing technologies, which has recently experienced huge breakthroughs, are able to make precise additions, deletions, and alterations to the genome. With these technological advances has come an explosion of interest in the possible applications of genome editing, both in conducting fundamental research, and in promoting human health through the treatment or prevention of disease and disability. As with other medical advances, these applications come with their own set of benefits, risks, regulatory frameworks, ethical issues, and societal implications. We will discuss the basic principles and applications of gene editing, as well as the ethical issues surrounding this revolutionary technology.
Programme
Download the detailed Programme (pdf - 113 KB)
The Speakers
Dr Bo Gao is an Assistant Professor of the School of Biomedical Sciences, Li Ka Shing Faculty & Medicine, at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). His research uses a combination of molecular, biochemical, cellular and genetic approaches to investigate cell signaling in normal developmental processes and in human diseases. Before he joined HKU, he was a staff scientist at U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health (NIH). Bo was awarded with Dr Cheng Yu Tung Fellowship, National Youth Science and Technology Innovation Award, NIH the Fellows Award for Research Excellence and NIH Genome Recognition of Employee Accomplishments and Talents (GREAT) Award.
Dr Alan Wong is an Assistant Professor of the School of Biomedical Sciences and Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). Alan's research takes an integrative approach leveraging on various techniques in synthetic biology, including CRISPR-based genome engineering, to decode the complex genetic bases of human diseases, as well as rationally design and engineer genetic circuits for providing new biomedical and biotechnological solutions. Before joining HKU, he worked at the Synthetic Biology Group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and developed CRISPR-based screening platforms. Alan was awarded with the Croucher Foundation Studentship (2008), the Butterfield-Croucher Award (2008), the Hong Kong Institution of Science Young Scientist Award in life science (2011), the Croucher Foundation Fellowship (2012) and the RGC Early Career Award (2016).
Dr Angela Wu is an assistant professor in the Division of Life Science and Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Angela is passionate about the development of new technologies at the interface of basic biology and engineering and using these interdisciplinary approaches to investigate biological mechanisms and human diseases. In 2015, she also co-founded Agenovir Corporation, a CRISPR-based therapeutics company targeting infectious diseases for a complete cure. While at Agenovir, she helped to successfully raise Series A venture capital funding of US$10.6M. Agenovir has been acquired in early 2019. As recognition of her achievements in technology and innovation, Angela was named one of MIT Technology Review Innovators under 35 Asia in 2016, and a World Economic Forum Young Scientist in 2018.
Co-organised By:
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