A new funding scheme called “Technology Start-up Support Scheme for Universities (TSSSU)” was launched by the Innovation and Technology Commission (ITC) of the HKSAR Government in October 2014 to cultivate an entrepreneurial culture and ecosystem at universities. ITC provides each university an annual funding of up to HK$4 million to encourage technology start-ups.
Announced in April 2015, eight HKU project teams were awarded TSSSU@HKU, of which four were from the Faculty of Engineering. Below is a brief account of these four technology start-ups.
Startup: Accosys Ltd.
Key members: Prof. Victor O.K. Li and Mr. Miles Wen
Photo of Accosys Ltd.’s co-founders: EEE PhD candidate Mr. Miles Wen (left) and Prof. Victor O.K. Li (right)
Location services have become an essential part of our modern lives. The widely available global positioning system (GPS) works well outdoors. But when it comes to indoor environments where we spend most of our time, GPS simply does not work. However, due to relatively high deployment costs, the full potential of such technology has not been realized.
Accosys Ltd. was founded in January 2015 to provide indoor location services using crowd-sourcing and big data technologies. The founding team of Accosys Ltd. consists of two key members, Prof. Victor O.K. Li and Mr. Miles Wen, and keeps on expanding. Prof. Li, Chair Professor of Information Engineering and Head of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE), is the chief technology advisor, while Mr. Miles Wen, final year PhD candidate (EEE) and Fulbright scholar (EECS) at UC Berkeley, runs the daily operations and strives for building a team of awesome people to fulfill the vision of the company.
Startup: CommaPen
Key members: Mr. Kong Xiangtianrui (PI), Prof. George Q. Huang, Dr. Luo Hao, Mr. Shao Saijun, Mr. Yang Huibin, Mr. Li Ming
Prof. George Huang (left) and his team
Our first product “CommaPen Pro” will be launched soon. It took more than one year to make it from a simple idea to a real gadget. This product integrates a UHF RFID module, a barcode module and a plugin sensor into a small-size and wearable Pen. Core part of the pen is with barcode scanning, RFID tag reading, communication and writing functions.
CommaPen Pro is suitable to be employed in complicated industrial environment to capture different formats of data as well as facilitate frontline operations. It can be well integrated with smart phones and personal computing devices. Moreover, Comma middleware technology has been developed to enable CommaPen to compact with various smart devices while easily configuring CommaPen’s functions to work in different application scenarios. The above technological achievements of CommaPen Pro will enable us to expand business to related industrial applications such as data center management of banks.
Founding members are mainly PhD students and Prof. George Q. Huang, Head of Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, as their advisor. The vision of the startup is “Comma, makes smart people happier”.
Startup: HK Unific Publishing Limited
Key members: Mr. Au Yeung Hoi Hang (PI), Mr. Law Kam Yuen, Mr. Chiang Sze Cheuk, Mr. Wong Kwan, Mr. Shravan Sunderraman, Ms Zoe Yiu, Ms Maomao Wu, Ms Tang Nga Man, Dr. Wilton Fok
From Left: Dr. Wilton Fok, Eric Au Yeung, Alan Chiang, Paul Wong, Mr. Shravan Sunderraman, Ken Law and Alison Tang. Another two members Zoe Yiu and Maomao Wu were absent in the photo.
The project team has been developing technologies for e-learning such as interactive mobile learning system, e-textbook publishing platform and educational games and simulations for schools in Hong Kong, Mainland and overseas since 2013. New technologies on cloud computing, crossed platform tablet PC and mobile apps development and augmented reality were deployed in the project. In order to commercialise these technologies, TSSSU@HKU supported the team to further enhance the solution into markatable products and turn them into a financially self sustainable business. The vision of the startup is to use technology to help transforming Hong Kong into an e-education hub in Asia.
HK Unific Publishing is a cross-disciplinary team which consists of nine founding members: five graduates from the Faculty of Engineering and three graduates from the Faculties of Education, Social Sciences, and Business and Economics, and Dr. Wilton Fok, Assistant Dean (External Relations and Knowledge Exchange), as their advisor.
Startup: Living Tissues Co. Ltd.
Key member: Dr. Barbara Chan, Dr. Sunny Cheng, Dr. Daniel Chik, Dr. Annie Cheng
Dr. Barbara Chan (right) and her team members
Living Tissues Co. Ltd. is a spinoff from the Tissue Engineering Laboratory at HKU. Our vision is to maintain, restore and promote the active lifestyle in patients with cartilage problems. Our mission is to provide professional services in growing YourCartilage™, which is an implantable cartilage-bone assemblage mimicking the structure of the native tissues, using the patients’ own bone marrow cells. YourCartilage™ can be used to replace and regenerate damaged cartilage tissues with outcomes comparable to autograft, the existing clinical gold standard. Living Tissues aims to translate our cartilage regeneration technologies into clinical use at affordable price.
The founding members are Dr. Barbara Chan (Department of Mechanical Engineering), who provides scientific and technological advice; Dr. Sunny Cheng, an experienced technology entrepreneur, who provides business advice; and Dr. Daniel Chik and Dr. Annie Cheng, both are alumni of the Biomedical Engineering programme and PhD graduates from HKU, who oversee the business development and technology development, respectively.