The fifth wave of Covid-19 in Hong Kong has put most of us in stay-home mode for months. Instead of wishing for full resumption of working in office in person, the need for creating immersive virtual workspace for staff is in demand. The cover story of this issue of Cubic Zine, Prof Tan Lee, an expert in AI and speech technology, propounds that solutions brought by technologies needs to be balanced against its social benefits, and a key question – will there be any users?

Happy new year! May all your dreams and goals manifest in 2022! This issue of Cubic Zine features the ebullient Dr Chui Pui Yi Apple, Research Assistant Professor of the School of Life Sciences and founder of Coral Academy. Her watchword for us? “Act Now.” It’s pertinent to both conservation and entrepreneurship — give it a try no matter how. In this issue: #FoodTechAccelerator #Breer #SocialEconomy #EuropeanCommission #CoralAcademy #Conservation

This September sees the return of vigour and verve on CUHK campus. This issue of Cubic Zine brings you vivacious stories from architecture and health of the elderly, to trending technologies. At the same time, ORTKS has for you a series of exciting events and programmes, including the very first Innovation Day, and application openings of various startup funds!

Here comes Issue 17 of Cubic Zine! We are excited to see the growth of innovation and entrepreneurship here at CUHK while InnoPort will soon celebrate its first anniversary. The teams inside InnoPort are busy promoting social entrepreneurship as well as tech transfer and the collaboration between the industry, academia and research sectors. Cubic Zine will bring you more diverse topics with stories in a nutshell for you to grasp innovation trends in a single email.

One of missions of ORTKS is to assist scholars to apply for research funding. As resources are limited, disappointment is unavoidable. Prof Anthony Fung shares his failure stories including the very first one soon after he was on board with CUHK. “I wish to launch that project so much that I set off without any funding.” The true story of many entrepreneurs.

Happy Year of the Ox – 2020 has finally drawn to a close! To better equip yourself for 2021, have you got any plans yet? No clue? Well, have some uplifting stories from Cubic Zine! May these cases on innovation and entrepreneurship inspire you, including our protagonist of this issue – Prof Winton Au, and his encounter with performing arts.

Breaking news! A few staff teams under Office of Research and Knowledge Transfer Services (including us editors) have already moved bases to the recently opened InnoPort. We simply can't wait for more interdisciplinary and interdepartmental events to take place here. While Cubic Zine is alive and well, we’ll “go lean” and bring you more diversified content on innovation and entrepreneurship!

Happy anniversary to Cubic Zine! Echoing our first issue, we are focusing again on the hot topic mental health. Prof Fiona Ho and team set up social enterprise Wellness Travellers to advocate evidence-based lifestyle medicine, nurturing the “heart” via our “body” and raising the public’s resilience via proactive prevention. Their tips are certainly useful as we all struggle to cope with the new normal.

“To get out of the box, turns out you need painstaking efforts within it.” When grappling with your many real-life challenges, Prof Andy Wong recommends the philosophy of the book Inside the Box – to start with the limitations of your surroundings, instead of waiting for inspiration to strike. As the virus continues to wreak havoc, this reminder should come by handy to all industries, including students industriously adapting to the new normal of learning.

Let’s talk about people and the community this month! As Prof Ng Mee Kam suggests, we may reframe or refocus, “auditing” our intangible community resources from a strength-based perspective. The uncovered skills, inspirations or potentials can naturally be utilised to tackle issues in the community. Such way of thinking sounds very applicable to our personal lives too – especially during crises.