Featured Projects and Final Year Projects with daily-life applications developed by faculty and fresh graduates of City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) were showcased in the “STEM Carnival cum Student Project Exhibition”, organised by the Bright Future Engineering Talent Hub (the Hub) of CityUHK’s College of Engineering (CENG) from 3 to 5 July.

Over 500 primary and secondary school students visited the CityUHK campus to join a series of STEM workshops, specially designed by teaching and research staff of CENG, which incorporated elements of both learning and fun to promote students’ knowledge and interest in STEM and to inspire their creativity and problem-solving skills. The initiative is aligned with CityUHK’s mission to promote STEM education.

“As an iconic activity of the Hub, the STEM Carnival cum Student Project Exhibition affirms our commitment to nurturing science and engineering talent. It also enables the participants to learn about the outstanding projects of our graduates and excellent research achievements of our faculty,” said Professor Shek Chan-hung, Advisor of the Hub and Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) and the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

One of the key projects on display was a next-generation electron microscope (EM) developed by a research team led by Professor Chen Fu-rong, Chair Professor in MSE. This is the first such EM system in the world that is self-designed and manufactured by university. It comprises a pulsed electron source, fast camera, staged pumping vacuum system and aberration corrector. Incorporating both transmission and scanning functions, the EM system can generate a sample 3-D image in just five minutes. With its high magnifying power, which can show objects in nano- or atom-scale, the EM has the potential to be used in life medicine, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals in the future.

Another popular project in the exhibition was an autonomous driving racing car, developed by a team led by Professor Wang Jianping, Chair Professor in the Department of Computer Science. It is capable of positioning and mapping, trajectory planning, and using model predictive control algorithms to achieve superior speed and excellent obstacle avoidance on a brand-new demanding racetrack. It won the 17th F1TENTH Autonomous Grand Prix. The team set up a small racetrack at the exhibition to let the participants experience the car’s outstanding performance.

Also taking part in the exhibition were CityUHK’s Robocon Team and Underwater Robotics Team, which recently won open competitions. The CityUHK Robotics Team won the Key Influencer Award in the Robocon 2024 Hong Kong Contest, and the CityUHK Underwater Robotics Team won third prize in the 2024 MATE ROV Competition, held in the US. By participating in workshops on designing and creating underwater robots, the students learned how to solve real-life problems with their STEM knowledge, while also enhancing their critical thinking, teamwork, entrepreneurial and innovation skills. They also learned more about how underwater robots help in rescue work and conservation of marine ecosystems.

Other research projects presented in the exhibition by teaching and research staff from departments under CENG included:

• “Stacking Blocks into a Building”, from the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering
• “Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) for Imaging Abnormalities in Aging Brain”, from the Department of Biomedical Engineering
• “AI in Computer Science – AI Artist”, “AI in Computer Science – AI Chatbot” and “AI in Computer Science – Autonomous Driving Racing Car”, from the Department of Computer Science
• “Do you see What I see?”, from the Department of Electrical Engineering
• “A Self-designed Compact Electron Microscope”, from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering
• “A Powerful Large-scale, Complex Environment LiDAR Cloudsourcing Approach”, from the Department of Mechanical Engineering
• “Schlieren Imaging for Seeing the ‘Invisible’ Acoustic Waves” and “Hybrid Artificial Intelligence for Real-World Energy and Manufacturing Applications”, from the Department of Systems Engineering

For more details about the exhibition, please click here.