Protected: Young Scholar TechTalk – Synergistic Low Carbon and Durable Design for Reinforced Concrete Structures
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HKAE TechTalk – The Unequal Burden of Climate Change
October 22, 2025 (Wednesday) 4:00-5:00pm
While climate change is a global crisis, its impacts are profoundly and systematically unequal. This talk will confront the uncomfortable truth that the burden of a warming planet is not shared fairly. We will explore how different communities, nations and even people of different sexes are suffering its most devastating consequences.
We will start with first the frontlines of the crisis, then trace the roots of this disparity, highlighting how vulnerable regions are experiencing climate impacts with a severity that outstrips their capacity to cope.
However, this is not just a story of victimhood; it is a call for redefined responsibility. This talk will argue that climate justice must be at the heart of our response. The fight against climate change is inseparable from the fight for a more equitable world.
TechTalk – Insights into Indoor Airflow during the Pandemic and Beyond: Measurement, Visualization, and Simulation
October 14, 2025 (Thursday) 4:00pm-5:00pm
Improving indoor air requires addressing source control, ventilation, and filtration. This presentation explores filter performance from both aerosol science and building science perspectives with a focus on how theoretical and laboratory-tested filtration efficiencies translate to filtration performance in real buildings. The removal of particulate matter is only part of the filtration story. Filters also have a variety of secondary consequences including emissions of gas-phase compounds and complicated impacts on energy use. Some of these secondary effects may have a positive impact, including the ability of filters to offer insight on air quality through filter forensics, the analysis of the particles that accumulate on the filter. Several examples of filter forensics for disease surveillance, exposure assessment, and ambient air quality are used to illustrate the hidden value in used filters. The COVID-19 pandemic further increased the attention paid to central and portable filtration in buildings and this presentation assesses new challenges and opportunities that arise from this renewed focus.
TechTalk – CFD for Urban Winds, Air Quality, and Thermal Comfort
October 9, 2025 (Thursday) 4:00pm-5:00pm
Improving indoor air requires addressing source control, ventilation, and filtration. This presentation explores filter performance from both aerosol science and building science perspectives with a focus on how theoretical and laboratory-tested filtration efficiencies translate to filtration performance in real buildings. The removal of particulate matter is only part of the filtration story. Filters also have a variety of secondary consequences including emissions of gas-phase compounds and complicated impacts on energy use. Some of these secondary effects may have a positive impact, including the ability of filters to offer insight on air quality through filter forensics, the analysis of the particles that accumulate on the filter. Several examples of filter forensics for disease surveillance, exposure assessment, and ambient air quality are used to illustrate the hidden value in used filters. The COVID-19 pandemic further increased the attention paid to central and portable filtration in buildings and this presentation assesses new challenges and opportunities that arise from this renewed focus.
TechTalk – The Secret Lives of Filters
September 5, 2025 (Friday) 4:00pm-5:00pm
Improving indoor air requires addressing source control, ventilation, and filtration. This presentation explores filter performance from both aerosol science and building science perspectives with a focus on how theoretical and laboratory-tested filtration efficiencies translate to filtration performance in real buildings. The removal of particulate matter is only part of the filtration story. Filters also have a variety of secondary consequences including emissions of gas-phase compounds and complicated impacts on energy use. Some of these secondary effects may have a positive impact, including the ability of filters to offer insight on air quality through filter forensics, the analysis of the particles that accumulate on the filter. Several examples of filter forensics for disease surveillance, exposure assessment, and ambient air quality are used to illustrate the hidden value in used filters. The COVID-19 pandemic further increased the attention paid to central and portable filtration in buildings and this presentation assesses new challenges and opportunities that arise from this renewed focus.
TechTalk – Minimally Invasive Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) Research @ HKU
June 27, 2025 (Friday) 4:30pm-5:30pm
This talk will present the latest advancements from Professor Chan’s research team and his startup company Brainsmart, dedicated to developing minimally invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies for stroke rehabilitation and neurological recovery. His team focuses on flexible neural probes and high-density ECoG arrays that can be implanted without craniotomy, offering safer options for high-risk patients. Professor Chan will highlight their recent results in decoding neural signals related to hearing perception and motor intentions, and discuss how these findings contribute to future neuroprosthetic applications. The talk will also cover our pathway from technology development to clinical translation, aiming to enhance functional recovery and quality of life for patients.
TechTalk – Building Multi-dimensional Parallel Training Systems for Large AI Models
June 24, 2025 (Tuesday) 4:30-5:30pm
The increasing modeling capacities of large DNNs (e.g., Transformer and GPT) have achieved unprecedented successes in various AI areas, including understanding vision and natural languages. The high modeling power a large DNN mainly stems from its increasing complexity (having more neuron layers and more neuron operators in each layer) and dynamicity (frequently activating/deactivating neuron operators in each layer during training, such as Neural Architecture Search, or NAS). Dr. Cui’s talk will present his recent papers (e.g., [PipeMesh, in revision of a journal], [Fold3D TPDS 2023], [NASPipe ASPLOS 2022], and [vPipe TPDS 2021]), which address major limitations in existing multi-dimensional parallel training systems, including GPipe, Pipedream, and Megatron. Fold3D is now the major thousands-GPU parallel training system on the world-renowned MindSpore AI framework.
TechTalk – More is Less: Dynamic Sparse Processing in the Era of Sustainable AI
June 19, 2025 (Thursday) 4:30-5:30pm
With modern AI seemingly transforming all aspects of our modern society like magic, it is easy to forget the impacts such modern technology marvel is causing to our fragile environment. From massive industry-scale training of large neural networks of epic sizes, to the proliferation of folding AI inference in our everyday activities, AI applications are rapidly increasing the stress to our global energy and water infrastructure. The coming era of AI demands not only the smartest AI models, but also a new generation of sustainable AI mindset that rethinks the when and how to apply AI intelligence.
In this talk, Professor So will discuss one angle that addresses the “how” question with intelligent algorithm-architecture co-designed systems that reduce both energy consumption and computing latency using dynamic sparse processing. Sharing the same “more is less” principle, a series of works from a dynamic sparse processing system for event cameras to token-steering in modern diffusion models will be discussed. Together, these works illustrate that by doing a little bit more upfront intelligently, it is possible to drastically reduce the amount of work necessary to perform the same AI inference operation during run time without affecting the accuracy of a model. The results are solutions that not only are fast, but they are also orders of magnitude more energy-efficient than typical GPU-accelerated systems.
HKAE TechTalk – Transforming Wastewater into Green Hydrogen: An Option to Produce the Fuel of the Future in HK?
June 17, 2025 (Tuesday) 4:00-5:00pm
Environmental Analytical Microbiology integrates advanced sequencing, absolute quantification, and standardization to address microbial pollution and antibiotic resistance. This talk traces microbial ecology’s evolution from microscopy to metagenomics, highlighting innovations like cellular internal standards for cross-study comparisons. Case studies demonstrate applications in wastewater treatment, anaerobic digestion, and microbial risk assessment, emphasizing quantification of pathogens and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). The global resistome analysis reveals anthropogenic impacts on ARG distribution, while frameworks prioritize high-risk genes. Future efforts focus on the Environment–Microbiome–Health axis, advocating for microbiome-informed urban design to enhance public health. By merging cutting-edge technologies with interdisciplinary collaboration, this field aims to mitigate environmental risks and promote sustainable co-evolution with microbial ecosystems.
Young Scholar TechTalk – From Grains to Landslides: An Efficient Particle Method for Simulating Large Deformation of Geomaterials
May 13 2024 (Tuesday) 4:30-5:30pm
Mr Shuaihao Zhang is currently a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Hong Kong, supervised by Professor Sérgio D.N. Lourenço. He previously obtained his B.Eng. and M.Eng. degrees from Central South University. During his Ph.D. studies, he spent one year as a visiting researcher at the School of Engineering and Design, Technical University of Munich, under the supervision of PD Dr. Xiangyu Hu. His research focuses on improving the stability and accuracy of Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) algorithms and applying them to simulate large deformation problems in geotechnical engineering.