Academic Research
Academic research is the exploration for new knowledge. During the year, researchers at HKUST charted new frontiers in a wide range of fields, creating significant impact in the international academic community. Examples of these achievements include:

• Following the year 2000 success in fabricating the world's smallest (0.4 nm) single-walled carbon nanotubes, HKUST physicists discovered that these nanotubes exhibit superconductivity below 15K (-258ºC). This is the first time single-walled carbon nanotubes have been found to show superconducting properties. The discovery opens up a completely new area for both basic and applied research in one-dimensional superconductivity. The synthesis of the world's smallest single-walled carbon nanotubes by Dr Zikang TANG and his colleagues was elected one of the "Top Ten International Scientific and Technological Advances" by academicians at the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It was the only elected item from China.
  
  
• A research team of the Department of Biochemistry discovered a novel signaling pathway critical in the functioning of the human nervous system, mediated by a protein called cyclin-dependent kinase 5 (Cdk5). Neuroscientists believe the discovery may prove invaluable in the design of therapeutic agents for nerve-muscle disorders.
  
  
• Dr Jing-Song HUANG of the Department of Mathematics made a substantial contribution to the representation theory of real reductive groups, by solving the problem of determination of eigenspace representations on affine symmetric space. The result sheds new light on developments in representation theory and harmonic analysis.
  
  
• The South China Research Center of the Division of Humanities initiated a research project in collaboration with scholars from Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Japan to document the inscriptions from ethnic Chinese religious buildings in Ho Chi Minh City. The findings will help scholars develop a new research area — religious inscriptions — for studying the history and society of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam.
  
  
• HKUST was ranked top university in finance research output among
  Asia-Pacific universities, in a survey published in the June 2001 Pacific-Basin Finance Journal. Prof Ka Lok CHAN of the Department of Finance came first in the region in terms of individual research output. The survey also noted that
  the top 10 Asia-Pacific universities have achieved research productivity comparable to major public and private universities in North America. In addition, the Department of Accounting was ranked No.1 in the world for publication in five of the field's top academic journals.