2014年9月3日星期三

ASTRI Industry and University Consultation Forum 2014

The ASTRI Industry and University Consultation Forum (IUCF) is a major event which was held annually in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. ASTRI organizes the IUCF to inform current and potential partners from industry and academia about the institute’s latest technical developments solicit suggestions for future R&D projects and cultivate opportunities to establish collaborations. I attended the morning part and would like to share industry and academic professionals’ view on Innovation and Technology.


Beginning the forum, Mr. MY Wong (Chairman of the Board, ASTRI) gave a welcome speech. He introduced ASTRI mission to enhance Hong Kong’s competitiveness in technology-based industries through applied research and one of goals to performing relevant and high quality R&D for transfer to industry. Mr. Wong expected more and more technology commercialization.


Then Prof. Tony F. Chan (President, HKUST) gave an opening remark. Before his speech, HKUST video was shown and one of their students to be young entrepreneur (DJI) and elected as top ten innovators in China. He said many discoveries on technology application were in Hong Kong but no industry invested such as Google glass. We were missing strategy and long term planning on Innovation and Technology. Therefore, Culture on Innovation and Technology should be developed. Prof. Chan also said there were many support to universities / faculties in Korea compared with Hong Kong. However, Hong Kong had our advantages such as global talents and capitals, as well as, close to China.


Mr. Vincent Tang (Acting Deputy Commissioner for Innovation and Technology, ITC) was our guest speaker to give forum address. He said ASTRI was one of Hong Kong R&D Centres and about 30% increase in the industry income. Upto Jun 2014, Hong Kong government supported ASTRI through ITF funding to initiative 3600 projects and funds upto HK$2500M. Recently, ITC launched R&D cash rebate fund to encourage industrial R&D projects.


Kick-off Ceremony for IUCF


Group photo


Dr. Frank Tong (CEO, ASTRI) gave us a talk entitled “An Overview of ASTRI’s Latest Development”. He introduced ASTRI was government subvention organization. It is one of the five R&D Centers in Hong Kong and focusing on R&D in ICT field. Hong Kong office in Science Park is headquarters and one liaison office in Hi-tech Industrial Park, Nanshan, Shenzhen. Then he briefed the income and funding, ITF-funded projects, staff academic qualification (~80% is Master or above), Patents Granted and Filed, and number of Technology Transfer.


After that he introduced ASTRI’s existing core competence included IC Design, Component Packaging & Manufacturing Technology, Software Embedded, Software Cloud and Communication Wireless.


Dr. Tong mentioned there were four types of project funding included ITF-funded platform projects, ITF-funded seed projects, Contract research projects and Industry Collaborative Projects. He also stated some achievements such as ASTR Hosted the National Engineering Research Center for Application Specific Integrated Circuit System (Hong Kong Branch), ASTRI-HP Information Technology Research Centre, and TCL-ASTRI Strategic Partnership.

Panel Discussion named “Advancing I&T through collaboration among Academia, R&D Centres and Industry”
Mr Wong Ming-yam (Board Chairman, ASTRI) was the moderator and the panel members were (Left):
- Ms. Cally Chan (Managing Director, HP Hong Kong)
- Prof. Tony F. Chan (President, HKUST)
- Prof. Roland Chin (Deputy Chancellor and Provost, HKU)
- Dr. Samson Tam (Chairman, Technology Development Committee, Federation of Hong Kong Industries)
- Prof. Alex Wai (VP (Research Development), PolyU)
- Dr. Frank Tong (CEO, ASTRI)


During the discussion, Ms. Cally Chan said Innovation is our DNA and Technology is our core in HP. She wore a RED cloth indicating that R – R&D Resource is important; E – Engagement of all key stakeholders and D – Deployment to local industry is significant. Prof. Roland Chin said Hong Kong had only 0.7%GDP invested from government in terms of research which was not enough. Moreover, job opportunities for technology students were limited. Dr. Samson Tam added government had ready want to make change. We needed to select at least some area becoming excellence such as ICT. In addition, two areas included mobile commerce (O2O) and Automation & Robotic. Prof. Alex Wai also commented that Industry and government needed to accept failure and learnt from failure. No Risk Taking and No Innovation! Prof. Tony Chan said universities needed to teach entrepreneurship and change mindset (culture revolution) through changing the reward system, society mind and government on R&D that was not expenditure but investment. Finally, Dr. Frank Tong said we needed role model for young people and issued more projects.

Reference:
HKSTPC - http://www.hkstp.org/
ASTRI - http://www.astri.org/main/


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