12 IN FOCUS Cover Story Transforming students into innovators Meanwhile, experiential learning began to feature in Prof. Li’s teaching at the School of Engineering. One of the rst students to take his class providing training for the Hong Kong section of Robocon, a robotics competition organized by the Asia-Paci c Broadcasting Union, was Frank WANG Tao, later founder of DJI (see box on P ). In , the rst year the Hong Kong contest was held, the HKUST team did not win. But the students’ interest had been red up and the next year they did triumph, subsequently earning a place among the top three in the Asia-Paci c nal in Beijing. Frank Wang went on to utilize his Robocon experience to build an autopilot for model helicopters; and to launch DJI (see box on P ). Meanwhile, Prof. Li and the School took note of more than the contest results. It was clear that the students taking part gained hands-on experience of creating a product, from mechanical machining to how to buy components from suppliers in Shenzhen. In addition, major attributes that the successful students called upon, and developed through such learning beyond the classroom, were all key elements for innovation and entrepreneurship: persistence in the face of initial failure, big goals, and con dence that they could develop systems that were times better than others. In , the School o cially introduced experiential learning, which now involves hundreds of students annually in local and overseas engineering design contests and cornerstone projects. Xbot and X-Tech With his own entrepreneurial experiences and relentless energy, Prof. Li began to look for further opportunities to synergize human talents emerging from HKUST and other Hong Kong universities with the manufacturing ecosystem of the Greater Bay Area. In , he established the Songshan Lake Xbot Park, in partnership with the Dongguan government, as an incubator for robotics and smart hardware start-ups. The park o ers entrepreneurial mentorship, seed funding, and supply chain support, and has already incubated around companies, drawing young businesses not only from the region On the move During Prof. Li Zexiang’s years as a student and researcher in the US, he undertook a host of subjects. For his bachelor degree at Carnegie Mellon University, he majored in electrical engineering and economics. On moving to the University of California, Berkeley, he pursued a master’s in mathematics then a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science. As a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, he studied arti cial intelligence. On moving to New York University as an assistant professor, he worked at the robotics and manufacturing lab in the Courant Institute, founded by renowned mathematician and computer scientist Jacob “Jack” SCHWARTZ. It was Schwartz’s influence that propelled Prof. Li’s theoretical leanings toward application, working on multi- ngered robotic hands for automated manufacturing, among others. “That’s where I got my own hands dirty,” he said. Jiangmen Zhaoqing Prof. Li was among the rst to study robotics in the 1980s, carrying out research at leading US universities.
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