Knowledge Transfer Office

NewsletterTransforming Knowledge Into Practice

www.cityu.edu.hk/kto

No.6, August 2011

Technology Licensing TeamAssociate Vice-President(Knowledge Transfer)Mr H Y WongTel: 3442 6428Email: hy.wong@cityu.edu.hk

Associate DirectorMr David CheungTel: 3442 6733Email: david.cccheung@cityu.edu.hk

Senior Technology Transfer OfficerMr Tomson LeeTel: 3442 6441Email: thmlee@cityu.edu.hk

Technology Transfer OfficerDr Victor LauTel: 3442 6822Email: victolau@cityu.edu.hk

Technologies for Licensing DatabaseBrowse our database to find a technology that suits your needswww.cityu.edu.hk/kto/techforlicensing.htm

Enquiries / comments on this newsletterEliza ChanEmail: elizac@cityu.edu.hkTel: 3442 6442Rm 401, Festival Walk Office Tower80 Tat Chee AveKowloon TongHong Kong

Join CUBICCUBIC regularly organizes seminars and gatherings where members can mix and mingle with CityU researchers and industrial leaders. Please scroll to the last page for the membership form.

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NewsletterTransforming Knowledge Into Practice

www.cityu.edu.hk/kto

Table of ContentsIP Training Workshop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Entrepreneurship Workshop . . . . . . . . . . . 2Energy Harvesting Technologies

Forum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3CityU Projects Showcased at ICT Expo . . 4Seminar on the Development of

Biotech Industry in Hong Kong . . . . . . 5Conference on the Application of

UHF RFID in Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6IEEE Workshop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Licensing Deal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Granted Patents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

IP Training Workshop

T he Knowledge Transfer Office (KTO) organized an Intellectual Property (IP) Training Workshop from 24 to 26 May 2011

for CityU staff and students. Five experienced solicitors and IP management executives were invited to speak on a wide range of issues covering IP protection, patent drafting, patent search, and product design intelligence. Held in the Hong Kong Productivity Council, the workshop was organized for the second successive year as one of the measures to promote knowledge transfer.

One of the students who attended the course was Mr Dominic Lai, enrolled in the Master of Arts in Language Studies programme of the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics. When asked what he liked most about the workshop, Mr Lai said, “The speakers were experts in their fields, and that the in-class assignments were useful in guiding me to explore more deeply into IP and patent issues.”

Another participant, Mr Eddy Cheung, was also impressed with the usefulness of the workshop.

“Most of the topics covered in the workshop were not new to me; nonetheless, I found the speakers’

experience and techniques in IP protection interesting and valuable to me.” Mr Cheung is a second year part-time student of the School of Law’s Juris Doctor programme.

The workshop was attended by over 110 CityU staff members and students.

Knowledge Transfer Office Newsletter – No.6 August 2011

2Mr Eric ChenMr Henry Lau

(From left) Mr David Cheung, Associate Director of KTO; Mr Peter Diu; Prof Gregory B Raupp, Vice-President (Research and Technology); Mr H Y Wong, Associate Vice-President (Knowledge Transfer).

Entrepreneurship Workshop

K TO organized a two-day “Discovery–Innovation–Entrepreneurship Workshop”

for students and staff on 12 May and 8 June. The speaker, Mr Peter Diu, formerly Vice-President of the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Institute (ASTRI), shared with participants the essentials of business plan writing, the startup process, fundraising, marketing, business evaluation, and presentation skills.

Addressing the 30 plus participants in his welcoming remarks, Mr H Y Wong, Associate Vice-President for Knowledge Transfer, said that he was glad to see the workshop attract a good turnout.

“The workshop is part of KTO’s strategic plan to support knowledge transfer, an important area of work that the University Grants Committee would like local universities to engage in, alongside research and teaching,” Mr Wong added.

Mr Eric Chen, one of the CityU students who won the Third Prize of the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition 2010, was invited to talk about his

experience in planning and running his startup company in the second-day workshop. Mr Chen’s winning business plan proposed the use of CityU’s transgenic fish technology to develop an environmental testing business. The technology was invented by Prof Cheng Shuk-han of the Department of Biology and Chemistry and her PhD student Dr Chen Xueping.

One of the students who attended the workshop was Mr Henry Lau, a year-three undergraduate majoring in materials engineering. Mr Lau enrolled in the workshop because he was intrigued by technology transfer and the prospect of turning scientific research into commercial products.

“I find success stories about commercialization very inspiring. I’d also like to draw on my background in materials engineering to start my own business,” Mr Lau said.

More workshops will be organized regularly to open up new avenues for students and staff to transform their innovative impulses into application.

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(From left) Prof Henry Chung; Dr Johnny Ho; Mr Terry Lo

Energy Harvesting Technologies Forum

T wo CityU researchers and one industrial executive were invited to share the recent development

and advances in energy harvesting in a forum organized by the Knowledge Transfer Office on 27 May 2011. To reduce humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels, scientists are exploring novel ways to extract power from diversified sources such as photovoltacis, wind energy, kinetic energy, and salinity gradients. The innovative energy harvesting technologies and solutions presented at the forum are summarized as below:

Design of nanostructured materials for photovoltaicsBy Dr Johnny C HoAssistant Professor of the Department of Physics and Materials ScienceAccording to Dr Ho, photovoltaic or solar power was the least harvested form of renewable energy that only accounted for 0.05% of worldwide energy consumption. To popularize solar power, its production has to be made more efficient and hence cheaper. To date, silicon is the most commonly used material for making photovoltaic devices but its efficacy is compromised by its influence on photon management. Quoting from recent studies, Dr Ho pointed out that nanostructures may help solve the above problem by manipulating the flow of photons to achieve better light trapping. He also talked about the major features of shallow junction silicon solar cells and 3D nanopillar array solar cells, which may be applied in flexible photovoltaics.

Free power from thermal, kinetic and solar energyBy Mr Terry LoField Application Manager of Linear Technology CorporationMr Lo’s presentation outlined some of the most widely used applications of energy harvesting, such as remote industrial sensor networks, indoor environmental control, building automation, avionics, remote metering, and battery replacement for low power instruments. Specifically, the speaker focused on devices that maximize energy harvested from solar, piezoelectric, and thermal sources.

A maximum power point tracking technologyBy Prof Henry ChungProfessor of the Department of Electronic EngineeringEnergy harvesting devices that maximize the energy transferred from the energy source to the load are a common component in photovoltaic modules. Maximum power transfer is usually achieved by adjusting the input resistance but such an approach may involve the use of sophisticated digital circuits. In this presentation, Prof Chung proposed the use of a technology which, by exploiting frequency modulation schemes, regulates front-stage power converters such that the input impedance of the converter can match with the output impedance of the energy source. The technology facilitates maximum power point tracking by making use of the characteristics of the converter, and that the solar panel and converter can be treated as a single unit.

Knowledge Transfer Office Newsletter – No.6 August 2011

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President Kuo at the CityU booth

CityU Projects Showcased at ICT Expo

T welve CityU research projects were on display at the Information and Communications

Technology (ICT) Expo held in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from 13 to 16 April 2011. Prof Way Kuo, President and University Distinguished Professor of CityU, was Chairman of the Grand Judging Panel for the Hong Kong ICT Awards 2011.

Project title Principal investigator Department

Aerial Holographic Projection Dr Peter Tsang Electronic Engineering

Dielectric Resonator Antennas Prof Leung Kwok Wa Electronic Engineering

Flexible Organic RFID Tags and Smart Sensors for Food Safety

Dr A L Roy Vellaisamy Physics and Materials Science

IB-SSMS: Secure Mobile Messaging Dr Duncan Wong Computer Science

Low Cost Polymer Nano-Composite Solar Modules Dr A L Roy Vellaisamy Physics and Materials Science

Medical Sensors for Telemedicine Dr K F Tsang Electronic Engineering

Telemedicine ICT Infrastructure Dr K F Tsang Electronic Engineering

USB Encryption Token Dr Duncan Wong Computer Science

Use-IT-Easy: A Low Cost High Performance Mobile RFID Platform

Prof Lim Leong Chye Andrew Management Sciences

WeZoom – 3G Mobile Video Surveillance System Prof Jia Weijia Computer Science

3D Chinese Painting Dr Peter Tsang Electronic Engineering

3D Sound Dr Peter Tsang Electronic Engineering

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Dr Frank Wan

Seminar on the Development of Biotech Industry in Hong Kong

T he CityU Business and Industrial Club (CUBIC) organized a tea gathering for its life science

interest group members on 29 April 2011 at the Staff Lounge. Dr Frank Wan, a seasoned legal practitioner with a strong background in biomedicine, was invited to talk about the development of Hong Kong’s biotech industry.

Dr Wan’s presentation started with an overview of the growth of biotechnology over the past century, including the milestone achievements of modern biotechnology made in the 1970s to 1980s. Regarding the situation of Hong Kong, Dr Wan pointed out that large-scale companies with good networks and marketing channels in China were more likely to succeed, and that small- and medium-sized companies were dependent on the major players for funding and marketing support. Very often, smaller biotech firms were forced to conclude marketing agreements with large companies, thereby relinquishing part of the financial returns from their investment.

Biotech SMEs, overshadowed by large companies, may not find themselves operating on a level playing field. Despite this, SMEs did compare favourably with their more powerful counterparts in terms of innovation.

“SMEs are usually more creative, while large corporations, wary of the competition posed by new technologies, are less receptive to change.

“Large companies focus on marginal improvement of their existing products and services to expand their existing market share, while SMEs exploit innovative invention — usually originating from universities — to produce different products and services. Such products and services, completely new to the market, will either create a new market in their own right, as with Internet services and eBay, or bring down the market leaders overnight, as with digital cameras,” Dr Wan said.

Key to the development of biotech industry is the partnership between industry and academia, but the success of such a union, according to Dr Wan, was often compromised by the differences in interests and views of the participating parties.

Dr Wan is Senior Partner of the Pang, Wan, and Choi Solicitors, and had received intensive training in cancer research in the University of Toronto under the supervision of Prof Tak Mak. A keen advocate of the commercialization of biotechnology, Dr Wan has held important positions in various technology transfer organizations and hi-tech companies.

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Participants gather outside the Shenzhen Research Institute Building

Conference on the Application of UHF RFID in Libraries

A conference on the application of Ultra High Frequencies Radio Frequency Identification

(UHF RFID) technology in libraries was held in the CityU Shenzhen Research Institute Building on 18 March 2011. The conference was hosted by the Higher Education Libraries “UHF RFID Application” Working Group and GS1 Hong Kong, while the Knowledge Transfer Office and the Shenzhen Research Institute provided support to the event. The conference drew an audience of about 130.

The Working Group comprises representatives from numerous local and mainland universities interested in incorporating UHF RFID in their services, with CityU, Tsinghua University and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University as its founding members. GS1 Hong Kong is a not-for-profit organization set up to promote industrial standards for use in supply chain management.

By providing a platform of exchange between libraries and providers of UHF RFID services, the conference aimed to promote the standardization of UHF RFID and hence its application in libraries. On top of standardization, the presentations also address issues on the latest development of UHF RFID, library data models, and best practices.

RFID involves the use of radio waves for tracking and is widely used in supply chain management, traffic control, and product identification. Data about an object are sealed in an RFID tag which upon activation will be transmitted to an RFID reader in the form of radio waves.

But the application of the technology is not limited to logistics and inventory control. UHF RFID is beginning to attract the attention of libraries around the world, and there are good reasons accounting for its growing popularity. One of them is its long reading distance

that can be as far as 10 m, a feature essential to inventory control and locating misplaced books.

In the CityU Library, for instance, a patented automatic checkin-checkout system using UHF RFID has been in operation since April 2008. Named EasyCheck System, it was developed by the CityU Library together with the CityU Wireless Communications Research Centre. Feedback from users has been extremely encouraging, as evidenced by a 50 percent increase in checkouts.

As its name suggests, UHF RFID is characterized by frequencies much higher than other types of RFID technologies. Normally, the higher the frequency, the higher the speed and data load of transmission.

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IEEE Workshop

T he IEEE Workshop on Solid-State Lighting, organised with the assistance of the CityU Business and Industrial Club (CUBIC), was held at the Hong Kong Science and

Technology Parks on 15 April 2011. The workshop was co-organised by the Technical Committee on High Performance and Low-Cost Applications (IEEE Power Electronics Society) and the IEEE Hong Kong Joint Chapter of Power and Energy, Industry Applications, Power Electronics and Industrial Electronics Societies. Along with CUBIC, the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Hong Kong Solid State Lighting Industrial Consortium of the Hong Kong Productivity Council also provided support to the workshop. Prof Henry Chung, Professor of the Department of Electronic Engineering of CityU and Chairman of the Technical Committee on High Performance and Low-Cost Applications, addressed the participants at the opening ceremony. Prof Ron Hui, Chair Professor of the Department of Electronic Engineering of CityU, delivered a presentation on the general photo-electro-thermal theory for LED systems and its applications. The workshop attracted about 180 participarts.

Licensing DealTransgenic fish technology licensed to a startup companyThe transgenic fish technology developed by Prof Cheng Shuk-han of the Department of Biology and Chemistry and her student Dr Chen Xueping has been licensed to a startup company. The research team constructed an estrogen-sensitive gene capable of producing fluorescent proteins and transferred the gene to the genome of medaka fish. To detect the presence of estrogenic pollutants, transgenic larval fish are exposed to a test solution. Estrogenic activity in the test solution, if any, will induce the liver of the transgenic fish to give off a fluorescent glow visible under a fluorescent microscope. The patented technology facilitates rapid monitoring of estrogenic endocrine disruptors that occur in food, commercial products, and the natural environment.

Granted PatentsWideband linearization and adaptive power management for microwave power amplifiers (US7893771)

Inventors: Prof Xue Quan (Department of Electronic Engineering) Dr Lau Kwok Wai (ex-CityU staff)

The invention relates to methods and circuits for providing wideband linearization and self-adaptive power management to microwave power amplifiers. Power amplifiers, key components of wireless communication systems, have a high power consumption rate during signal transmission. When amplifiers operate within the linear region, much direct current power is lost as heat. To address the problem, a power amplifier design that maintains linearity without compromising power efficiency is developed. By using bias adaptation techniques, the invention reduces the adjacent channel power leakage, compensates signal distortion and enhances the average power efficiency. The invention is capable of boosting the power utilization factor of microwave power amplifiers.

Electrical excitation method (GB2446305)

Inventor: Prof Ron Hui (Department of Electronic Engineering)

Multi-phase AC excitation technique is fundamental to the fabrication of charging platforms that support simultaneous charging of electronic devices. This invention aims to improve excitation techniques by introducing novel means of exciting a multi-layer planar winding structure. An excitation current is injected into the respective layers at different phase angles

which should be out of phase with each other by regular intervals. Multiple electromagnetic fields will be created on the charging platform to generate flux lines that flow like water fountains. The new technique can generate both vertical and horizontal flux lines, such that electronic devices can be charged simultaneously regardless of their orientation.

Average power efficiency enhancement and linearity improvement of microwave power amplifiers

Inventors: Prof Xue Quan (Department of Electronic Engineering) Dr Lau Kwok Wai (ex-CityU staff) Dr Chan Wing Shing (Department of Electronic Engineering) Prof Chan Chi Hou (Department of Electronic Engineering)

The invention relates to a biasing circuit designed to help microwave power amplifiers achieve low distortion and high efficiency. The biasing circuit utilizes the nonlinear rectified current of a microwave diode or transistor for biasing the amplifying transistor self-adaptively. The biasing current not only reduces the DC bias power during low-power operation and increases self-adaptively during high-power operation, but also manipulates the intermodulation distortion dynamically. The biasing circuit distorts the input signals with positive gain and negative phase deviations. As a result, the average power efficiency of the operation is enhanced, the linearity of the input-output characteristic is improved, and the radiated level of adjacent channel power is reduced.

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