Officiating at the Opening Ceremony cum Teaching Excellence Awards Presentation on 1 February were Mr Nicholas Yang Wei-hsiung, Secretary for Innovation and Technology, Hong Kong SAR Government; Professor Way Kuo, CityU President; Professor Arthur Ellis, Provost of CityU; Professor Horace Ip Ho-shing, Vice-President (Student Affairs); and Mr Robert Lui Chi-wang, Convocation Vice-Chairman.

 

Mr Yang delivered a speech at the ceremony on the importance of innovation and technology. “The prominent success of Google, Facebook, Alibaba, etc, has one thing in common: these companies never stop innovating,” he said.

 

Mr Yang said CityU’s DEC had seen its influence grow. He also encouraged CityU students to make good use of the support from the University and to shape the entrepreneurship culture in Hong Kong.

 

Professor Kuo said the new Innovation and Technology Bureau that Mr Yang heads up would help Hong Kong develop further into a knowledge-based economy and an innovation hub for technology.

 

“CityU has a major role to play in this endeavour. For the past few years we have been encouraging our students and faculty to position discovery and innovation at the heart of the education that we provide at CityU,” he said.

 

He added that CityU’s pioneering DEC had helped to spur the development of exceptionally creative ideas.

 

Meanwhile, three exemplary teachers were presented with Teaching Excellence Awards in recognition of their contributions to raising the quality of teaching at CityU. They were Dr Yanto Chandra, Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Policy, with a joint appointment in the Department of Management; Dr King Lai Wai-chiu, Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering; and Mr David Yip Sai-on, Senior Teaching Fellow in the Department of Accountancy.

 

The ceremony also saw the presentation of awards to the winners of the “Smarter Life Aided by Robots” competition, the “My Own Discovery” contest, and the “Internationalisation Scheme”. The awards recognise the quality of original discoveries at CityU.

 

To find out more about discovery and innovation at CityU, visitors to the festival can learn about “DEC 2.0”, intellectual property, entrepreneurship and how to commercialise creative ideas via an exhibition titled Learning&Discovery@CityU, which is also being held until 3 February. Some of the innovative projects created by students that are on show include:

 

• Wearable Canvas: a wireless LED-fitted T-shirt and a drawing app that allow tailormade text or design patterns to be instantly printed onto a t-shirt. A patent application has been filed.
• Internal Affairs: an original card game that debuted at the 2015 Internationale Spieltage (SPIEL), an annual four-day game trade fair in Germany. The first print run sold out on the second day and the product is now being commercialised.
• iWear Closet: a useful app that allows you to mix-and-match what’s in your wardrobe and visualise the effect, saving you a lot of time.
• Smart Rubbish Bin: a robot, made out of Lego bricks, that can pack a rubbish bag, which is attached to the side of the bin, once the bin is full, and then re-line it with an empty bag.

 

Other events include the Majors and Minors Fair aimed at Year 1 students; the International Culture Carnival, which is a good opportunity for international and local students to have meaningful cultural exchange; and various music performances.