Prof. Martin D. F. Wong, Dean of Faculty of Engineering, CUHK and Mrs. Eunice Chan, Chief Operating Officer of Hang Seng Bank signed a memorandum of understanding for collaboration between the two parties on 9 December 2019.   This perfectly demonstrates the synergy between academic strength and practical expertise, the two parties join hands in nurturing students of the MSc FinTech and BEng FinTech programmes.  

Ultraprecise 3D printing technology is a key enabler for manufacturing precision biomedical and photonic devices. However, the existing printing technology is limited by its low efficiency and high cost. Professor Shih-Chi Chen and his team from the Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering collaborated with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to develop the “Femtosecond Projection Two-photon Lithography (FP-TPL)” printing technology. By controlling the laser spectrum via temporal focusing, the laser 3D printing process is performed in a parallel layer-by-layer fashion instead of point-by-point writing. This new technique substantially increases the printing speed by 1,000 - 10,000 times, and reduces the cost by 98%. The achievement has recently been published in Science, affirming its technological breakthrough that leads nanoscale 3D printing into a new era.

The conventional nanoscale 3D printing technology, i.e., two-photon polymerisation (TPP), operates in a point-by-point scanning fashion. As such, even a centimeter-sized object can take several days to weeks to fabricate (build rate ~ 0.1 mm3/hour). The process is time-consuming and expensive, which prevents practical and industrial applications. To increase speed, the resolution of the finished product is often sacrificed. Professor Chen and his team have overcome the challenging problem by exploiting the concept of temporal focusing, where a programmable femtosecond light sheet is formed at the focal plane for parallel nano-writing; this is equivalent to simultaneously projecting millions of laser foci at the focal plane, replacing the traditional method of focusing and scanning laser at one point only. In other words, the FP-TPL technology can fabricate a whole plane within the time that the point-scanning system fabricates a point.

What makes FP-TPL a disruptive technology is that it not only greatly improves the speed (approximately 10 – 100 mm3/hour), but also improves the resolution (~140 nm / 175 nm in the lateral and axial directions) and reduces the cost (US$1.5/mm3). Professor Chen pointed out that typical hardware in a TPP system includes a femtosecond laser source and light scanning devices, e.g., digital micromirror device (DMD). Since the main cost of the TPP system is the laser source with a typical lifetime of ~20,000 hours, reducing the fabrication time from days to minutes can greatly extend the laser lifetime and indirectly reduce the average printing cost from US$88/mm3 to US$1.5/mm3 – a 98% reduction.

Due to the slow point-scanning process and lack of capability to print support structures, conventional TPP systems cannot fabricate large complex and overhanging structures. The FP-TPL technology has overcome this limitation by its high-printing speed, i.e., partially polymerised parts are rapidly joined before they can drift away in the liquid resin, which allows the fabrication of large-scale complex and overhanging structures, as shown in Figure 1 (G). Professor Chen said that the FP-TPL technology can benefit many fields; for example, nanotechnology, advanced functional materials, micro-robotics, and medical and drug delivery devices. Because of its significantly increased speed and reduced costs, the FP-TPL technology has the potential to be commercialised and widely adopted in various fields in the future, fabricating meso- to large-scale devices.

The research team has been supported by the Innovation and Technology Commission (ITC), receiving multiple Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF). The project also received support from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, under the Department of Energy of the United States. The research team has received multiple U.S. patents related to this project and the results were published in Science in October. Science is regarded as one of the most prestigious academic journals in the world, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

 

Prof. Zhou Bolei, Assistant Professor from the Department of Information Engineering has recently been named as one of the 20 honourees of the regional MIT Technology Review “Innovators under 35”. 

The Faculty of Engineering of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) recently hosted the “2019 CUHK Conference on Financial Technology (FinTech)”, supported by the Centre for Financial Engineering (CFE) and CUHK Business School. The conference titled “When Wall Street Met Main Street – Real vs Virtual Economy” drew close to 500 industry practitioners, professors, researchers, government officials and regulators to explore the trends driving the explosive FinTech development, and future collaboration opportunities.

The forum was officiated at by Prof. Martin WONG, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Prof. Michael ZHANG Xiaoquan, Associate Dean for Innovation and Impact of CUHK Business School. Featured speakers including CUHK scholars, representatives from banking, technology, financial regulatory authorities and legal sectors were invited to give their insights on the applications and development of FinTech today. From the forum, Prof. WAI Hoi To, Assistant Professor, Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management of CUHK commented on the malicious agent detection in social network. In the midst of the increasingly popular open Application Programming Interface (API), Ms. Frankie TAM, Senior Associate, DLA Piper shared her view on its impact on new developments in the Hong Kong banking sector. Dr. Florian SPIEGL, Co-Founder & COO, FinFabrik pointed out that the new field of blockchain-based technologies and digital assets is emerging fast and starting to have a real impact on the capital markets sector.

Other guest speakers included Prof. CHEW See Meng, Associate Professor of Practice in Finance, Department of Finance, and Associate Director for MBA Programmes of CUHK Business School, Mr. Gilbert LEE, Head of Strategy/Planning and Chief of Staff, Hang Seng Bank Ltd, Mr. Zane MOI, Deputy General Manager and Head of Partner Ecosystem, Amazon Web Services, Mr. Jay CHAN, Solution Consultant, NICE Ltd, Mr. Galen LAW-KUN, Global Crypto Team, PwC, Mr. Daniel CHAN, Consultant, FORMS HK, and Mr. Eric CHOW, Head of Digital Channel & Delivery, Hang Seng Bank Ltd. The speeches covered a wide range of topics, including AI, biometrics, crypto assets, cybersecurity, decentralized finance, FinTech in banking, machine learning, new career opportunities, regulatory technology (RegTech) and tokenization. Other speakers also gave their views during the two panel discussion sessions entitled “The Ingredients of a FinTech Hub” and “FinTech Talents: Demand & Supply”.

Prof. CHEN Nan, Professor, Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, Director of CFE and the Bachelor of Engineering programme in Financial Technology (BEng in FinTech) of CUHK, and Co-Chairman of the Conference’s Programme Committee said, “The applications of FinTech are pervasive in various kinds of sectors including economics, law and banking. An up-to-date understanding of FinTech is particularly important to keep abreast of the changing market trends and professional personnel training. 2019 marks the second anniversary of the BEng in FinTech launched by CUHK, the first ever FinTech undergraduate programme in Hong Kong. With this multi-disciplinary programme, CUHK is indeed spearheading the effort to supply talent to both academia and industry.”

Prof. CHAN Chun Kwong, Professor of Practice in FinTech, Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, and Director of the Master of Science programme in FinTech (MSc FinTech) of CUHK commented, “This is the inauguration year of the MSc FinTech. With the talent in these programmes and the innovative ideas in the market, we see an all-win situation from building a bridge between the university and  industry. The interaction between the university and industry will definitely help to formulate strategies for fostering talent and promoting the development of FinTech education.”