School of Science Deep Dive

The HKUST School of Science describes its vision as becoming "a top-tier research school distinguished by innovative education and frontier research." It is made up of the Division of Life Science and four departments — Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, and Ocean Science^※, together covering the core natural sciences plus a number of emerging interdisciplinary fields.

At a glance: 144 full-time faculty members^※; roughly 4,850 students (3,341 undergraduate, 860 research postgraduate, 649 taught postgraduate); about 2,114 non-local students^※. Alongside the School of Engineering and the School of Business and Management, the School of Science anchors the University's "science, engineering, business" disciplinary backbone; its relative size and positioning against the other schools can be found in the schools overview.

The one-sentence answer to "what is the School of Science strong at": Chemistry has Ben Zhong Tang's aggregation-induced emission (AIE); Physics has Xi Dai on topological states of matter and Ping Sheng on acoustic metamaterials; Life Science has Nancy Ip's team and its Alzheimer's blood test; and Ocean Science runs Hong Kong's first-ever undergraduate degree in its field — four research lines, each with a verifiable "signature achievement." Each department is covered in turn below.

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# 1. Department of Chemistry

# 1.1 Research areas

Chemistry research spans five broad fields:

1. Analytical and Environmental Chemistry — methods for environmental and bioanalytical chemistry, atmospheric chemistry, food and pharmaceutical analysis, microfluidics
2. Synthetic Chemistry — organic methodology, total synthesis, organometallic chemistry and catalysis
3. Materials Chemistry — inorganic and hybrid materials, nanomaterials, polymers, aggregation-induced emission (AIE) materials^※ and organic electronic materials
4. Physical and Computational Chemistry — laser spectroscopy, dynamics of biomacromolecules and supramolecular systems
5. Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry — protein organisation in metabolism, signal transduction, medicinal chemistry and drug design

# 1.2 Signature achievement: aggregation-induced emission (AIE)

Chair Professor Ben Zhong Tang discovered the aggregation-induced emission (AIE) phenomenon in 2001^※. Conventional fluorescent materials suffer fluorescence quenching when they aggregate; AIE materials do the opposite, becoming more emissive in the aggregated state. That inversion opened an entirely new direction in fluorescent materials research.

Tang's group has since developed over 200 high-performance luminogens^※, with applications ranging across biological imaging, food safety testing, medical and health monitoring, high-efficiency OLED displays and forensic science (for example, fingerprint visualisation).

Tang joined the HKUST Chemistry department as an assistant professor in 1994 and was promoted to Chair Professor in 2008^※; he was elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2009 and a fellow of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in 2020^※; and in 2017 he received the First-Class State Natural Science Award, the first HKUST scholar to do so^※. What began as a counter-intuitive laboratory observation has grown into a research field pursued by thousands of groups worldwide, and it remains the most recognisable marker of HKUST chemistry on the international stage.

# 1.3 From lab to industry: energy and materials chemistry

Beyond AIE, the department's other main line is energy and materials. The department leads the Energy Institute^※, pulling together work on batteries, fuel cells, catalysis and sustainable materials, with an eye to the low-carbon industry needs of Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area. For materials chemistry, it shares the William Mong Institute of Nano Science and Technology^※' characterisation platforms with the Physics department and the School of Engineering, forming a "synthesis–characterisation–device" pipeline. HKUST's long accumulation in materials science — more than three decades, counting from the University's founding in 1991 — underpins the consistently top global QS position of its materials science discipline (see Section 8 below).

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# 2. Department of Mathematics

# 2.1 Research areas

Mathematics research splits into two overlapping communities: pure and applied mathematicians focused on mathematics itself, and mathematical scientists, engineers and statisticians focused on scientific content. Specific areas include:

• Pure mathematics: representation theory of reductive groups, quantum groups, infinite-dimensional Lie groups and Lie algebras, algebraic geometry, differential geometry, low-dimensional topology, equivariant topology, combinatorics, and geometric structures in mathematical physics
• Applied mathematics: complex analysis, exponential asymptotics, functional analysis, harmonic analysis, wavelet analysis, nonlinear equations and dynamical systems, integrable systems, fluid mechanics, inverse problems
• Statistics and data science: machine learning, statistical inference, graphical models
• Financial mathematics: asset allocation and management, derivatives pricing, risk management (in recent years combined with big data and machine learning)

The department runs three specialised facilities: the Scientific Computation Center (CSC), the CryptoFintech Laboratory, and the Math Support Center^※.

# 2.2 Undergraduate and postgraduate programmes

At the undergraduate level, the department offers a BSc in Mathematics, and jointly with the School of Business and Management, a BSc in Mathematics and Economics (MAEC). Taught postgraduate options include the MSc in Big Data Technology (joint with the Department of Computer Science) and courses in quantitative finance and statistics (the MAFS-coded programmes). Research MPhil/PhD programmes cover pure mathematics, applied mathematics and statistics, among other areas.

# 2.3 Recent honours

Prof. Kani Chen of Mathematics and his research team won a Gold Medal at the 51st International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva^※; Prof. Quoc Ho received the 2026 Hong Kong Mathematical Society Young Scholar Award^※; and students won the Jane Street Award for Best University at the 2025 Simon Marais Mathematics Competition^※.

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# 3. Department of Physics

# 3.1 Research areas and centres

The Physics department frames its mission as a triangle of "teaching, research and innovation," with research spanning atomic, molecular and optical physics and quantum optics; condensed matter physics; particle physics and cosmology; quantum information; scientific computation; soft matter and biophysics; and wave-functional materials. Its three most publicly visible strengths:

• Condensed matter physics and quantum materials (topological states of matter, quantum anomalous Hall effect, Weyl fermions)
• Photonics, photonic crystals and metamaterials (including acoustic metamaterials and topological photonics)
• Fundamental physics (cosmology, particle physics)

The department launched its first MSc in Physics in the 2025/26 academic year, admitting 61 students in the inaugural cohort^※, filling a gap in which it had previously offered only research degrees and no taught master's.

The department works closely with the Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), jointly supporting:

• Center for Fundamental Physics^※ — built with participation from Nobel-laureate-level scholars
• Center for Metamaterials Research^※
• Center for Quantum Materials^※
• William Mong Institute of Nano Science and Technology^※

# 3.2 Undergraduate and postgraduate programmes

Undergraduates can take a BSc in Physics; minor options cover astrophysics and cosmology, physics, and related areas. At the postgraduate level, the department offers MPhil/PhD in Physics, with entry through the integrated MPhil-PhD track.

# 3.3 Signature achievements: from acoustic metamaterials to topological states

The department's international reputation rests largely on two generations of sustained research into "waves in materials."

The invention of acoustic metamaterials. Chair Professor Ping Sheng is widely regarded as one of the originators and leaders of the entire field of acoustic metamaterials^※. In conventional thinking, the effective mass of a sound wave propagating in a medium is always positive; Sheng's group proposed that under certain finite frequencies an "effective negative mass" can be achieved, and used the idea to design metamaterials capable of blocking low-frequency noise within a structure only one thin layer thick — something long considered extremely difficult in engineering. This research line did not stop at papers: in 2014, several of Sheng's students and postdocs founded the Acoustic Metamaterials Group, taking the laboratory results toward commercial products^※. Another Chair Professor in the department, Che Ting Chan, has long worked on photonic crystals, transformation optics and topological photonics; his collaborations with Sheng span both the acoustic and optical wave worlds.

The theoretical breakthrough in topological states of matter. The most prominent recent work is Prof. Dai Xi's, who received the 2025 Future Science Prize in Physical Science — an award often called "China's Nobel Prize"^※. Dai holds the William Mong Chair Professorship in Nanoscience and a Chair Professorship in the Physics department; the prize recognised his pioneering contributions to condensed matter physics and topological materials: in 2010 he and his collaborators theoretically predicted the quantum anomalous Hall effect in magnetically doped topological insulators, experimentally confirmed three years later; in 2015 he went on to discover the first Weyl fermion in a solid-state material^※. Together these two bodies of work turned "topology" from an abstract mathematical concept into a physical reality observable in real materials — and conceivably usable one day in low-dissipation electronic devices.

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# 4. Division of Life Science

# 4.1 Structure and scale

The Division of Life Science is named a "division" rather than a "department" within the School of Science. It has 35 full-time faculty members^※, more than 600 undergraduate students and over 200 postgraduate students.

# 4.2 Research focus

The division's research centres on four areas:

1. Neuroscience — home to the State Key Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience^※, one of Hong Kong's 16 state key laboratories; focused on the mechanisms of Alzheimer's disease, synaptic plasticity and neurodegenerative diseases
2. Structural biology — resolving biomolecular structures using super-resolution microscopy, cryo-electron microscopy and related techniques
3. Cell and developmental biology — stem cell research, mechanisms of embryonic development
4. Biotechnology — biosensing, drug development, engineering of biological organisms

The division also runs the Center for Stem Cell Research^※, the Center for Epigenomics Research^※ and the Center for Chinese Medicine R&D^※.

Shared facilities include the Biosciences Central Research Facility (BioCRF)^※ and the Laboratory Animal Facility & Cryo-EM Center^※.

# 4.3 Programmes

Undergraduate: BSc in Biochemistry and Cell Biology (BCB), BSc in Biotechnology (BIOT), BSc in Biomedical and Health Sciences (BMH); and the joint BSc in Biotechnology and Business (BIBU, with the School of Business and Management).

Postgraduate: MPhil/PhD in Life Science (including the integrated direct-entry PhD); taught MSc programmes in Biotechnology, in Drug Regulatory Affairs and Policy (DRAP), and in Biotechnology Entrepreneurship and Leadership (ELBT).

# 4.4 Signature achievement: a blood test for early Alzheimer's screening

The State Key Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience's best-known output is a blood test for Alzheimer's disease (AD). A team led by the laboratory's director, neuroscientist Nancy Ip (currently President of HKUST), developed in 2021 the first plasma-protein-based method for early AD detection, distinguishing patients from healthy controls with greater than 96% accuracy^※. From more than a thousand plasma proteins the researchers screened out 19 "hub proteins" as biomarkers, published the work in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia and validated it in collaboration with University College London and local hospitals^※.

The significance of the work lies in "early" and "simple": AD brain pathology begins 10 to 20 years before symptoms appear^※, and conventional diagnosis relies on lumbar puncture or PET scanning — costly, invasive and impractical for population screening. A single blood draw stratified risk assessment, opening the door to large-scale early screening. Ip's earlier research focused on the biology of neurotrophic factors and the molecular mechanisms of brain development and synaptic plasticity — and this path, from fundamental neurobiology to clinical diagnostics, is precisely the weight that the lab carries as one of Hong Kong's few state key laboratories.

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# 5. Department of Ocean Science (OCES)

# 5.1 History and positioning

The Department of Ocean Science dates back to the University's founding; in 2026 it celebrates its 35th anniversary^※. It focuses on "interdisciplinary marine science and technology research and education," and is the only university in Hong Kong with on-campus marine research facilities (the Ocean Research Facility, OCRF, including a waterfront platform)^※.

# 5.2 Research areas

Three main research domains:

1. Marine Ecology — microbial and plankton ecology, the coastal environment of the Pearl River estuary, biotechnology (marine bioactive compounds), molecular ecology and ecological genomics
2. Oceanography — ocean circulation, biogeochemical cycles, molecular adaptation in deep-sea organisms, climate change and South China Sea ecology
3. Ocean Technology — ocean engineering, ocean modelling and resource management

Primary study areas: the Pearl River estuary, Hong Kong's coastal waters, and the deep sea (including the South China Sea).

# 5.3 Programmes

Undergraduate: BSc in Ocean Science and Technology (OST), the first undergraduate degree of its kind in Hong Kong^※; an Extended Major in AI option is also available.

Postgraduate: MPhil in Marine Environmental Science, PhD in Marine Environmental Science; the taught MSc in Environmental Health & Safety, the MSc in Global Marine Resources Management (a double-degree programme, the Global Marine Resources Management Double Award)^※; and joint PhD programmes with mainland China institutions.

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# 6. Undergraduate admission and major selection

Admission to the School of Science does not lock students into a department on day one. Instead, students are admitted by broad admission group, spend their first year without a declared major, taking foundational science courses and general education, and declare a specific major only after the first year of study^※. This design gives students a buffer year to weigh chemistry against physics against mathematics — a philosophy continuous with the University's general education structure described in four-year curriculum and common core.

Main admission routes:

Types of majors: beyond the departmental majors (Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, Ocean Science and Technology, and BCB/BIOT/BMH under Life Science), the School also offers the school-level "Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence in Science" (DASC) major, plus cross-school programmes in Data Science and Technology (DSCT), Mathematics and Economics (MAEC), Biotechnology and Business (BIBU), and Risk Management and Business Intelligence (RMBI)^※. The AI and data-oriented programmes such as DSCT and DASC closely mirror the School of Engineering's CSE offerings — readers may wish to read the engineering deep dive to see HKUST's "twin-track" approach, engineering and science, to data and AI.

Extended Majors: the Extended Major in AI can be paired with any one of Mathematics, Physics, Ocean Science and Technology, or Chemistry^※, letting science majors layer systematic AI training on top of their discipline. In addition, the University offers more than 20 minors, including actuarial mathematics, astrophysics and environmental science.

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# 7. School research infrastructure (major research units)

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# 8. Subject rankings (QS 2025 vs QS 2026)

First, the earlier QS 2025 figures:

Now the latest QS 2026 subject rankings^※, showing where each of the School's foundational disciplines stands globally, in Hong Kong, and in Greater China:

For context, the University as a whole rose to 44th globally in the QS World University Rankings 2026^※.

Two caveats. First, the 2025 and 2026 tables come from different annual editions: small movements in rank may reflect genuine changes in strength, but may equally result from methodological adjustments, and year-to-year fluctuations in any single edition should not be over-interpreted. Second, on the whole, the School of Science has long held top positions in Hong Kong in data science and artificial intelligence, materials science and chemistry, and together with the Schools of Engineering and Business and Management completes the "science, engineering, business" triad at the University.

Note: The ranks above are as reported by the sources for the specific year and specific ranking system cited. QS and THE draw subject boundaries differently, so ranks are not comparable across systems. Please return to the original ranking pages to verify the methodology for the year in question before citing.

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# Further reading

• Schools overview — size and positioning of the Science, Engineering, Business and Humanities and Social Science schools, plus cross-disciplinary units
• Engineering deep dive — how CSE and the School of Science's DASC/DSCT complement each other as the "twin tracks" in AI and data
• Four-year curriculum and common core — the general education framework behind the School's "admit first, declare major later" design
• Departments at a glance — full directory of University departments and a quick index

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