Smart Aging

By Prof. Henry H. N. LAM (Moderator)

Associate Head and Associate Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

By Prof. Yiwen WANG

Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering

By Prof. Zhengtang LUO

Associate Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

By Prof. Can YANG

Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics

Date:	14 Mar 2019

Time:	12:30 pm - 2:00 pm

Venue:	HKUST Business School Central 15/F, Hong Kong Club Building, 3A Chater Road, Central, Hong Kong

Enquires:	Ms Angela Cheng 2358 5019 / sfl@ust.hk

Brain Machine Interfaces – it's the thought that counts

by Prof. Yiwen WANG

Brain Machine Interfaces is an exciting research area of restoring motor functions for tetraplegic patients. In this talk, Prof. Wang will cite an encouraging case of a woman who has been paralyzed for 15 years, is able to hold her own cup of coffee to enjoy with the help of a robot arm controlled by her own will - the neural activities in her brain are transferred to tiny electrodes, then being interpreted through signal processing and machine learning technology to control the prosthetic arm.

How Novel Biomaterials Can Ease Aging Kidneys

by Prof. Zhengtang LUO

Kidney is the most fragile organ in our body that easily deteriorated as we grow old. In Hong Kong, the number of cases is more than 8,000 per year and is increasing. The common treatment of kidney failure is blood purification that draw blood from a patient to go through a cartridge containing sorbent material to trap the toxic molecules. In this talk, Prof. Luo will introduce how graphene as the new material of this treatment to achieve a higher performance but at a lower cost.

Data-driven Approaches to Precision Health

by Prof. Can YANG

As most of the common diseases have a genetic component, comparing it with the inherited DNA become an important approach in health management over the past decades. In this talk, Prof. Yang will discuss how data-driven approaches can identify if a person is at high risk for a specific disease in a relative shorter time which allows better infection prevention.

Prof. Henry H. N. LAM (Moderator)
Associate Head and Associate Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Prof. Henry H. N. LAM received BSc degree in chemical engineering and MSc degree in computer science from Stanford University. In 2005, he obtained his PhD degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he conducted research on utilizing the phase-separation property of surfactant systems for bioseparation. After graduating from MIT, he joined the Aebersold Group at the Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle, WA, as a postdoctoral research scientist and where he actively involved in several computational proteomics projects. Currently, he is the Associate Head and Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the Bioengineering Program at HKUST. His research interests include proteomics, metabolomics, mass spectrometry, computational and systems biology, and surfactant systems.

Prof. Yiwen WANG
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering

Yiwen Wang first came to HKUST in 2008 as a Research Associate, after gaining BSc and MSc degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China in Anhui, and a PhD from the University of Florida, USA. Following seven years at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, she rejoined HKUST in 2017. Prof. Wang’s research interests include the neural decoding of brain-machine interfaces, adaptive signal processing, computational neuroscience and neuromorphic engineering. She serves on the IEEE EMBS Neural Engineering Tech Committee, holds one US patent and has authored more than 70 peer-reviewed publications.

Prof. Zhengtang LUO
Associate Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Tom Luo Zhengtang joined HKUST after obtaining his bachelor degree from South China University of Technology and a PhD in Polymer Science from the University of Connecticut, followed by postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania. He focuses on nanomaterials synthesis and product development for applications in the areas of materials chemistry and nanofabrication. Prof. Luo is co-inventor of two US patents and the author of around 70 scientific publications. In 2010, he founded Graphene Frontiers LLC, a Pennsylvania-based company, which has attracted some US$2M in investments. His current research focuses on graphene 2D materials.

Prof. Can YANG
Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics

Can Yang is Director of the Health Data Analytics Lab at HKUST’s Department of Mathematics. His research focuses on statistical and machine learning methods, risk prediction for complex diseases and artificial intelligence for image analysis. His research papers have appeared in numerous high-impact journals, while his contribution to high dimensional data analysis earned him the 2012 Hong Kong Young Scientist Award for Engineering Science. Recently Prof. Yang established a long-term collaboration with Wegene, a company providing personal genetic testing and analysis services, which has secured funding of $1 million for a matching Innovation & Technology Fund research grant.