Lapas attēli
PDF
ePub

programs led to the establishment of two Polytechnics (Hong Kong Polytechnic and City Polytechnic) in the 1970s and 80s. These institutions provide numbers of technically trained graduates, but the institutions do not perform much basic research.

A shortcoming of Hong Kong's educational system has been that, until recently, only 6% of secondary school graduates went on to the university, compared to about 33% in South Korea and almost 50% in the United States Hong Kong's available tertiary educational system was not large enough to service the demand. The other two universities, Hong Kong University (HKU) (see reports mentioned above) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), are of high quality. HKU is a large, well-rounded institution with a strong computer science department, but with little engineering; CUHK has very strong programs in medicine (see below). HKUS&T is an attempt to add a third public university in Hong Kong built along the lines of a Western model, with outstanding faculty recruited worldwide and focused on enhancing the science and technological base.

The economic situation in Hong Kong is complex. During the past three years, inflation has been high, averaging over 12%. Even with concern about China or perhaps showing lack of concern-there is still a huge speculation in real estate, with some small apartment values growing 30% to 50% last year. Many experts feel that the main reason for the high inflation is the one-way extension of the manufacturing base into southern China; businesses in China now hold more than US$800M in Hong Kong dollars. Chinese re-exports through Hong Kong go mostly to the West, much less so to other parts of Asia. There has been a large rise of imports from Japan to Hong Kong, resulting in a high trade

deficit with Japan. On the other hand, inside Hong Kong, the economy looks strong, with workers taking home 15% to 18% more than in 1991. Hong Kong is and continues to be a trading nation; last year it imported approximately US$200B in goods and services, more than any other country among the industrializing countries of Asia.

Concerning HKUS&T, it is almost unbelievable what has been accomplished in a short period of time. A planning committee did not even exist until late 1986. Today, there are already a campus, faculty, and students in place. The major financial input for the project came from the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Total construction costs are more than $3.6B HK (about US$500M), of which the Jockey Club has contributed almost $2B HK (about US$300M).

The campus is situated overlooking and extending down to Port Shelter and Clear Water Bay on a portion of Hong Kong that is attached to mainland China in the New Territories region. A bathing beach is part of the campus, and visible islands, as well as most other adjacent land, are restricted to wilderness, park, or recreational use. Campus construction is in keeping with the setting. Buildings are modern and terraced, 130 m up the steep hillside. This is one of the most spectacular university sites that I have seen. University construction is in three phases, radiating out from a central core. Phase one is complete and houses a main administration building, classrooms, laboratories, computer center, library, 400-seat lecture hall, and dorm space for 670 students. This phase consists of over 100,000 m2 of academic floor space, 1500 rooms, and 50,000 m2 of additional space. Further residential housing and other laboratory space are being built. Phase two provides support for 5000

students and includes the majority of the sophisticated lab space; this is to be completed by the end of 1992. Plans are to have 7000 students enrolled by 1996 and room to expand to 10,000 students, 1000 faculty, and 2000 support staff.

The vice-chancellor and president is Chia-Wei Woo, who was recruited away from his position as president and professor of physics at San Francisco State University. The university's first pro-vice chancellor and also professor of physics is Chih-Yung Chien, from Johns Hopkins University, who has now decided to return to teaching and research in the Physics Department; his successor is Shain-dow Dung, former professor of botany and provost of the University of Maryland's Biotechnology Institute. Their stated view is that a research university is either world-class or nothing and that the new university would be world-class in 10 to 15 years. "When you start a university, you want to appoint senior people who, in turn, will recruit junior colleagues. The deans, the department heads, the senior professors, all have to be absolutely world-class." For example, Stelson was executive vice-president of Georgia Institute of Technology. He was also an assistant secretary of energy during the Carter administration. The computer science chairman, Shen, has his Ph.D. degree from Princeton (EE). He was recruited from the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation and has a background in software engineering.

Many of the other senior staff members have similar credentials, although almost all have some ethnic association with China. (Stelson does not; he has a five-year contract.) In the Computer Science Department, there are about a dozen lecturers, most with Ph.D. degrees received within the last five years from well

known universities. Shen explained that 12 more faculty are expected by next fall, and he plans to have 50 persons on the academic staff by 1994. Rapid growth has been the norm all over the campus. Plans are to recruit 100 faculty a year through the 1990s.

I was shown a number of plans for research projects that HKUS&T faculty/staff are involved in. However, first priority is simply getting organized. Hallways are cluttered with boxes hastily being unpacked and moved into waiting laboratories; senior faculty are so busy with recruiting that they are often on travel; new faculty are looking around for basic information; and construction people are everywhere. The energy level is very high. Since so many of the faculty come from excellent research universities in the West, it is natural that they will come with research projects and ideas they want to develop. But new projects must reflect the needs and strengths in Hong Kong. The Research Center gives a good indication of these directions; it has identified four major

areas:

Environmental research and

development of technologies to improve environmental quality in Hong Kong. These projects relate to air, water, and waste pollution, databanks for ecosystem, river sediment research, etc.

Energy research. These projects relate to the need to deal with Hong Kong's electrical needs, which are doubling every six years. Projects involve boundary-layer wind-tunnel studies, flue-gas desulphurization, power plant automation, seawater scrubbing, electric vehicles, eletromagnetic field impact on humans, revegitation of fly ashlagoons, etc.

Infrastructure. This relates to the Hong Kong government's plans to spend billions (U.S.) on transportation improvements. Projects, not yet specified, will be in the areas of civil and mechanical engineering. Database development. Relates to

the need to establish a database of scientific and technical data.

These are all just beginning, with the environmental program somewhat better developed. Most projects are in the phase of setting up agreements with other organizations, selecting directors, etc. For example, there are discussions with the Chinese (PRC) Institute of Oceanography to conduct joint sediment research in the Pearl River delta and in Hong Kong, with the Chinese providing the ocean-going vessels. Similarly, there are discussions with the Jet Propulsion Lab for participating in the satellite remote sensing of the sea environment and for establishing a ground receiving station for high resolution data. The projects that have been detailed are mostly small. The largest, the development of a large boundary layer wind tunnel and related modeling for pollutant dispersion, is budgeted HK$16M (US$2.2M).

at

There are already a small number of funded research projects, mostly in the Engineering School and funded by the Hong Kong government. These total about US$15M for three years. One project that looks very interesting is the development of an application specific integrated circuits production line to be built jointly with a U.S. company. There is also the expectation that a 2-3μ semiconductor fabrication facility will be running by fall 1992; it will be used for testing and teaching purpos

es.

Stelson asks, "What kind of research does Hong Kong need? For

answers, one need only look at government's and industry's plans for the territory's future. The government spends HK$2 to 4B (US$300 to 600M) yearly on environment-related tasks and has promised to build a HK$20B (US$3B) sewage system to clean up Victoria Harbor. Within the next five years, the China Light & Power Company will build one of the world's largest fossil-fuel power plants, with a capacity of more than 6000 MW at an estimated cost of HK$60B (US$9B). A nuclear power plant will be switched on in China at nearby Daya Bay. And Hong Kong will spend an estimated HK$127B (US$18B) to build a new airport and expand what is already the world's busiest port."

There are also interdisciplinary research institutes. The first, a Biotechnology Research Institute, was established in 1990 with a HK$130M (US$20M) grant from the Jockey Club. Eventually this will support 50 university staff from 10 departments. There is a second cooperating Institute at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Institute for Information Technology was established at the end of 1990 with a HK$100M (US$14M) grant from Hong Kong Telecommunications. (Telecommunications is big business in Hong Kong; one person in 10 has a pager, one in 30 has a mobile phone, and there are 30,000 T1 equivalents.)

The Computer Science Department has identified four major research areas that they will focus attention on, all related to software.

[blocks in formation]

(FDDI) backbone, modeled after the Project Athena in the United States.

Most of the projects are just beginning, but there are interesting developments almost daily. For example, The Computer Science Department has received a HK$20M (almost US$3M) donation to establish a Software Engineering Research Center, and a search is on for a director. The center will support both academic and commercial activities related to software engineering. For example, faculty are developing a Chinese X-terminal system that can accept different Chinese input systems, potentially very useful in this part of the world. The center also plans to let a contract for commercial development of information retrieval technology developed at the university; they will use income from the license to supplement the donation.

The Computer Science Department is clearly focusing its energies in different directions than traditional scientific computing, mathematical modeling, numerical analysis, etc. Professor Shen pointed out that these subjects are considered within the scope of the Mathematics Department, which is headed by Professor Din-Yu Hsieh (recruited from Brown) and a couple of people now in mathematics work in these fields, but I have no further details at this time. Shen also explained that several of the new computer science faculty are interested in parallel and distributed computing. During my visit, Professor Nelson Cue, who heads the Physics Department, asked me about various computing possibilities, suggesting that his department was hoping to obtain sufficient computing resources to deal with their own needs. The university has several HP9000s donated by Hewlett-Packard and is discussing the possibility of a small supercomputer with DEC. However, it is unlikely that any ac

tion will be taken before more specialists arrive, as the general philosophy is not to buy computing equipment before there is a faculty member committed to using it. (Wise decision.) Several years ago, an international panel investigated the possibility of a supercomputer for Hong Kong. Their conclusions were that this was not justified at the time. Perhaps the situation has now changed with the opening of HKUS&T. Engineering problems are greedy users of floating-point computing cycles. Further, I cannot think of many first-class scientific universities in the West that do not have advanced computing capability readily available, as well as internal expertise and research in scientific computation.

HKUS&T uses English as its teaching language. This decision is an excellent way of assuring that the university is a hospitable place for visitors and that technical information can easily flow both in and out. It certainly makes sense in the short run. But not all students are sufficiently prepared. I asked Professor F.H. Lochovsky who, with his wife, teaches in the Computer Science Department, about the quality of their students. He commented that often their progress seems mostly related to their skill in English and perhaps less to their ability or work habits. There are various remedial programs, but in the long run, I wonder if this will be an impediment or a benefit to getting the quality of research and scholarship that the university desires. It is also not clear to me if China will encourage movement to the Chinese language as the university becomes more established.

Of course China is the one, huge unknown in the future of Hong Kong-that is, the effect that Hong Kong's reversion to China in 1997 will have. There seem to be as many opinions on that as there were peo

ple that I spoke with. For the most part though, the university staff seem to feel that nothing much will happen, at least for a while. More generally, while many Hong Kong citizens are attempting to get passports from other countries, a British program to offer full British passports to selected citizens has been significantly undersubscribed. For those of means, Hong Kong's maximum 15% personal income tax rate is very appealing.

During my visit to HKUS&T, I was asked to give a briefing to the university faculty about the Office of Naval Research and especially on the role of our office in Tokyo. This was followed by a talk by my colleague, Dr. Iqbal Ahmad, who gave a similar explanation about the U.S. Army's Asian Research Office. This was the easiest briefing I have presented in this part of the world, because essentially 100% of the audience already had some experience with U.S. basic research funding agencies, including both ONR and ARO. This would make the chemistry of collaborating with U.S. science organizations and individuals extremely easy. It is also clear that the university administration is anxious for collaborations. While it is still too early to see how projects will turn out or whether HKUS&T will really turn into a world-class institution, the quality of the faculty suggests that Western researchers can go there and feel that they will get equal measure to what they contribute.

THE CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG

I have not yet been able to visit CUHK, but

Prof Lai Kin Yue
Department of Electronic
Engineering

Chinese University of Hong
Kong

Shatin, New Territories, Hong
Kong

Tel: +852 609-6262

Fax: +852 603-5558

was gracious enough to send me a copy of the university's summary of research projects for 1989-90 (the 1991 edition was scheduled to be ready in June 1992). The summary provides a comprehensive list of research activities. An introductory note from the vice-chancellor, Dr. Charles K. Kao, lists as the first goal for the 1990s, as "increasing linkages with academic institutions worldwide with substantial exchanges, research program and training opportunities."

CUHK is a large university, but it has an emphasis on medicine; fully one third of the research projects are from that faculty, with mathematics, computer science, electrical engineering, and information engineering accounting for less than 10%. There are no other engineering programs. Below we list the titles of research projects from these four depart

ments.

Mathematics:

• Soliton Equations with Variable Coefficients • Controllability and Stability of Nonlinear Distributed Parameter System

• Variational Theory for Fully Nonlinear Elliptic Equations. • The Geometry and Analysis of Pseudoconvex Cauchy Riemann Manifolds • Ring Theory, Semigroups, and their Applications— Research in Cliffordian Semigroups and a book on rings with chain conditions

• Harmonic Functions on Manifolds; Surfaces of Constant Mean Curvature • Standard Split Inclusion on Von Neumann Algebras

• Book on theory of ordered convex spaces and operators

Computer Science:

• Automatic Input System Using Connectionist Models • Invariant Object Recognition Using Connectionist Models

• An Intelligent Graphic User
Interface for Computer-
assisted Learning in a
Computer Library

• Globally Convergent
Interative Finding of Zeros
of Polynomials
Computer Processing of the
Chinese Language

• Graph Theoretical Approach
to Computer Optimization
• Numerical Solutions of
Integral Equations

• A Pattern Recognition Sys-
tem Using Probabilistic
Logic Neuron Nets

• Robotic Vision System
Using Logic Neurons

• Logic Program Debugging
• Algorithm Animation
• An Expert Computer Sys-
tem on Medical Consultation
and Management

• A Specification-based Neu-
ral Network Simulation
Environment

• Machine Translation
• On-line Recognition of
Hand-written Chinese Char-

acters

• Font Design of Chinese Characters

• Multimedia Information System with Voice Input • Linking Home Audio/Visual Equipment to Personal Computers

• Parallel Ray Tracing Algorithms

• Social Issues of Information Technology in Hong Kong • Computer-aided Fashion Design

• Computer Stereo Vision and the Automatic Navigation of Robot

• Computer Speech Synthesis • Temporal Database • Project Scheduling • Semantic Database

Electronic Engineering:

• Analysis of Error Behavior in the Implementation of the Integer Cosine Transform

• Weighted Cosine Transform • JPEG Coding Algorithm • Adaptive Filtering

• Secured Speech Radio System for Paramilitary Applications

• Man-machine Communication by Voice

• An Auto-synthesis Design System for a Low Power Bipolar Logic in VLSI Applications Application of Expert System on Gate Array Selection

• BiCMOS Implementation of UAA 4802 PLL/Prescaler

• Placement Algorithm for Incremental Layout Alternation

• Digital Pulse Width Modulator Converter

• Impedance Pneumography • Radial Pulsewave Tech

nique

• Electric Wheelchair • Instrumentation and Signal Processing in Biomedical Engineering

• Investigation of Novel Fiber and Integrated Optical Devices for Fiber Communication Systems

• Epitaxial Growth of III-V Compound Semiconductor Materials

• Comparison of Standard G3 Transmission and ECM G3 Transmission

• ISDN Development and Trials

• Semiconductor Laser

Research

• The Growth of Kinetics of Ordering

• Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy of Implanted Semiconductors

• Buried Nitride by Ion Implantation

• Effects of Damage on Impurity Diffusion in Silicon Spectroscopic Ellipsometry • Pixel Relaxation Labeling • 3-D Object Recognition Using Rigid Body Model • Convergence Study of

Neural Network Training • A Class of Median-Based Multishell Filters

• A Real-time Nonlinear Video Image Processor • Microstrip Antennas and Arrays on Curved Surfaces

• Bandwidth Enhancement of Microstrip Antennas

• High Frequency Electromagnetic Wave Propagation and Scattering by Gaussian Beam Wave Theory

• Integrated Optical Devices • Research in Optoelectronics Device Technology

[blocks in formation]
« iepriekšējāTurpināt »