In a major initiative for the future development of HKUST, plans for a new campus in Guangdong Province were announced in October, with the School of Engineering set to play a major role. The branch campus will be located near Guangzhou and, at . square kilometers, will be twice the size of the existing Clear Water Bay campus. It will initially concentrate on postgraduate education. Programs are expected to be thematic, solution-based, and cross-disciplinary, with thrust areas including sustainable energy and environment, robotics and autonomous systems, advanced materials and smart manufacturing, arti cial intelligence and data science, and biomedicine and biomedical engineering. Such programs resonate with the Greater Bay Area project, part of China’s strategic national blueprint. The goal is to turn the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, together with nine neighboring cities in Guangdong, into an innovation and technology hub of global impact. The campus will be located in Nansha, south of Guangzhou and adjacent to the Qingsheng station on the high-speed Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link, facilitating interaction with HKUST in Hong Kong. It will also be supported by HKUST Fok Ying Tung Research Institute, the University’s existing knowledge transfer hub in Nansha. The branch will be run as a separate entity, with construction costs and the future annual operating budget funded by the Guangzhou government. HKUST President Prof. Wei SHYY said , students would be enrolled in the rst stage, gradually rising to around , at steady state. Dean of Engineering Prof. Tim CHENG noted: “The additional site provides a great opportunity to complement – not duplicate – the current Clear Water Bay campus and there is no question that the School of Engineering will play a very important role.” The new campus will adhere to HKUST standards in teaching and learning, and academic policies. The medium of instruction will be English, and student and faculty recruitment will be global. As Mainland law requires a Mainland institution as a partner in such an undertaking, HKUST will partner with Guangzhou University. Expanding horizons Looking ahead: HKUST's Guangzhou branch campus will offer thematic, solution-based programs. 05 IN FOCUS Dr. Chung Sze-Yuen: led the initiative to found HKUST. A er playing a key role in establishing the Hong Kong Polytechnic and City Polytechnic of Hong Kong (now Hong Kong Polytechnic University and City University of Hong Kong), he then led the initiative to create HKUST. The University was established in . In addition to his role as Council Chairman, Dr. Chung served as HKUST’s Pro-Chancellor ( ) and Chairman of the Court ( ), subsequently retaining the title of Honorary Chairman. Dr. Chung graduated with rst class honors in mechanical engineering from the University of Hong Kong in . He died at the age of .
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