CUHK opens labs to entrepreneurs
Efforts in technology research and innovation at the Chinese University of Hong Kong are increasingly focused on their commercial use to attract private-sector funding.
This was apparent at the three-day Innovation and Technology Fair held by the university last week, which attracted thousands of visitors including technology entrepreneurs shopping for ideas.
Peter Shum, chief executive of Field Technologies CxMP, a manufacturer of personal digital assistants and other handheld devices, came to the fair to look for ideas.
'University research is good for proof of concept,' he said.
The exhibition is a biennial event showcasing the Faculty of Engineering's latest research. More than 30 projects were displayed this year.
K.Y. Leung, industrial liaison manager of the centre for innovation and technology said: 'We hope to use the event to communicate with the industry and arouse interest in new research.'
One project involved a team of students who are studying acupuncture using virtual reality technology as a stand-in for real patients.
Traditionally, acupuncture students practise on real patients. With virtual reality, practice can be done without injury or mistakes.
Students use 3D glasses to look at a body on screen, which they can poke with a virtual needle. The system tracks the needle and provides sensations for needle insertion into flesh and bone through the PhanToM Desktop, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology product that gives bi-directional force feedback.
The virtual reality system, used for teaching at the university's Chinese Medicine School, will be marketed to other teaching faculties of Chinese medicine.
Although the system is still in the early stages, and in fact broke down after two days of abuse by visitors to the fair last week, its aims are real. Many students and faculty members at the Innovation and Technology Fair are looking for opportunities to commercialise their research.
In particular, a product from one of this year's projects has been deployed by Hong Kong mobile operator CSL.
Professor Michael Lyu, who heads the project, said: 'CSL is using Video2MMS, which is one of the technologies under the overall iView project.'
Video2MMS packages ATV news and weather reports automatically into multimedia messaging system (MMS) content for delivery to mobile users.
Within 10 minutes of an ATV news or weather programme, the MMS content is ready for CSL subscribers to view on their mobile phones.
The core technology of the iView project is to automatically perform indexing, searching, and delivery of video content over internet and wireless networks. iView is designed to be a complete multilingual and multimedia platform for users to obtain content of interest any time and anywhere.
The project was originally funded by the government's Innovation and Technology Fund under the Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Commission with a grant of about $6 million.
'At the peak of the project we hired 10 full-time staff members, and 10 additional research students were working on related research topics,' said Professor Lyu.
To continue the research, he has turned to companies and venture capital for funding.
'We are also working with other potential sponsors like TVB, for commercialising other related technologies,' he said.
TVB is interested in a program which automatically slices news programmes into video clips.
Since a cutback in funds from the government, Professor Lyu said faculty members were now more 'active' about commercialising their research.
'Even the government is looking for projects with commercial potential to fund,' he added.
