Dr. Yifan Shang, a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and a Hong Kong Scholar, has been awarded the Best Poster Presentation Award at the Hong Kong Scholars Annual Symposium 2026, held in The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology on 16 May 2026. His winning presentation is titled “scMIR: a vision-language foundation model for single-cell light Microscopy Image Representation”.

Award-Winning Research

In the scMIR project, Dr. Shang first worked on assembling a large-scale, diverse single-cell microscopy dataset, spanning many cell types and microscopy modalities. Then, he develop a vision-language foundation model to learn general, biologically meaningful cell representations, transferable across classification, perturbation, and morphology-driven inference tasks. This work was conducted in the Laser Metrology and Biomedicine Laboratory at CUHK and jointly supervised by Prof. Renjie Zhou in the BME Department and Prof. Xiangxiang Zeng in the College of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at Hunan University.   

About the Program

The Hong Kong Scholars Program is jointly launched by the Society of Hong Kong Scholars and the China National Postdoctoral Council under the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. It aims at effectively pooling talent and research resources of Hong Kong and the Mainland to train outstanding postdoctoral fellows. Selected “Hong Kong Scholars” will come to Hong Kong to commence postdoctoral research work.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)’s InnoHK Hong Kong Centre for Logistics Robotics (HKCLR) announced the establishment of the Hong Kong Embodied AI Lab, the city’s first full-stack laboratory of its kind. The lab will focus on advancing the development of frontier technologies in embodied AI and robotics, and will collaborate with 24 industry partners, investors, and innovation and technology enterprises to accelerate the translation of research into industrial applications. This marks a significant step forward in strengthening Hong Kong’s AI industry chain and research commercialisation, contributing to Hong Kong’s development into an international innovation and technology hub.

The launch ceremony of the Hong Kong Embodied AI Lab was held on 18 May. Professor Irwin King Kuo-chin, CUHK’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education), said that AI would become a key driving force behind the transformation of research and education. In recent years, CUHK has integrated AI into teaching and research, with a commitment to nurturing talent equipped with AI knowledge, innovative thinking and practical capabilities. He added that the University would also continue to strengthen interdisciplinary education to cultivate high-calibre talent for Hong Kong and the rest of the nation’s innovation and technological development.

Professor Liu Yunhui, Director of HKCLR, said that as a research platform dedicated to AI and robotics applications, HKCLR has possessed capabilities from fundamental research to application translation. The establishment of the Hong Kong Embodied AI Lab, he added, would aim to drive embodied AI technologies from the laboratory into real-world applications and accelerate the commercialisation process.

Breakthrough technologies on display – AI robotics enter daily life and industries

Professor Dou Qi, Associate Director of HKCLR, introduced a vision-language model integrated with spatial intelligence, jointly developed by HKCLR and a CUHK research team. The research findings were recently published in the internationally renowned journal Science Robotics, demonstrating HKCLR’s extensive research capabilities in frontier areas, including AI, robotic perception and embodied intelligence, while further advancing the deep integration of AI with the physical world.

At the ceremony, several pioneering embodied AI robotic innovations were showcased, demonstrating vast application potential in logistics, manufacturing, and services:

• Hong Kong’s first AI-powered dual-arm robotic platform: Equipped with multi-model sensors and a mobile manipulation system, capable of spatial perception and dual-arm collaboration to handle complex automated tasks in household and service environments.
• “Millimetre‑level” lightweight force‑controlled robotic arm: Weighing only 6 kg, yet achieving millimetre-level precision, offering high adaptability across diverse scenarios, adaptable to different manipulation platforms,
• All-terrain quadruped robot: Equipped with a differential drive system that enhances structural efficiency and payload capacity, combined with reinforcement learning-based motion control and visual navigation algorithms, it is capable of autonomously traversing rugged and challenging terrain.

Strengthening industry-academia-research-application framework

The Hong Kong Embodied AI Lab collaborates with 24 industry partners, investors, and innovation and technology enterprises to deepen cooperation across research collaboration, technology transfer, industrial applications and investment support. The 24 partners include (in alphabetical order): AGIBOT Innovation (Shanghai) Technology, BPS Global Group, China Resources Research Institute of Science and Technology, CUHK Innovation, Cyan Technologies, DeepCybo (Beijing) Technology, Deep Robotics, Guangzhou Huashang College, Haptron Scientific (Shenzhen), Hong Kong Innovation Angel Investment, Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group, Lumistar (Shanghai) Robotics Technology, Mondo Technology, National and Local Collaborative Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center, Radiant Tech Ventures, Shanghai Houxue Capital, Shanghai Seer Intelligent Technology, Shenzhen Agricultural Technology Innovation Group, Shenzhen Wuji Technology, Universal Cosmos, VinMotion General Purpose Humanoid Robots Application Development and Research Joint Stock Company, Westwell Holdings (Hong Kong), Yushu Technology, and Zhejiang Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center.

About the Hong Kong Embodied AI Lab 

In alignment with the National 15th Five-Year Plan and global trends in AI and robotics development, the Hong Kong Embodied AI Lab is dedicated to building a full-stack research and development platform for embodied intelligence. Its research covers core technologies and systems ranging from joint modules and robotic hardware, control algorithms, manipulation algorithms and perception algorithms to humanoid robots, dexterous hands, quadruped robots, robotic arms and novel robot morphologies, with a focus on diverse real-world applications.

More details: https://www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk/en/press/cuhk-establishes-hong-kongs-first-full-stack-embodied-ai-lab-to-advance-ai-driven-industrial-transformation/

In celebration of the 60^th Anniversary of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), a special issue was published by the Advanced Materials in January 2025, with the theme on advanced materials research at CUHK: From Biomedicine to Electronics and Beyond.

Under the editorship by Prof. Mao Chuanbin, Professor (Global STEM Scholar) from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at CUHK, this special issue has drawn international attention from the materials/device community. Advanced materials research is actively pursued on the CUHK campus by professors from various departments. This special issue featured various research articles contributed by members CUHK Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Science, as well as some scholars from School of Science and Engineering at CUHKSZ.

Special Issue: 60th Anniversary of The Chinese University of Hong Kong: Advanced Materials: Vol 37, No 2