CUHK Research: Changing the world

A synergistic circuit Within a 15-minute drive in Hong Kong’s New Territories is a med-tech ecosystem that is hard to match. It integrates CUHK’s on- campus medical and engineering faculties, the medical faculty’s Prince of Wales teaching hospital, the CUHK Medical Centre and, since 2020, the 12,000 square feet Multi-Scale Medical Robotics Center (MRC) at the Hong Kong Science Park. Together, they cover a spectrum from basic research to prototype and product development, to pre- clinical trials and physician training, to clinical application in hospitals. “It’s a total pathway for how we translate these technologies from bench to bedside,” says CUHK Department of Surgery Professor Philip Chiu Wai-yan, Co-Director of the MRC. “CUHK was the first to introduce robotic surgery in Hong Kong. But then we needed to partner with expert engineers who could take robotic technologies from concept to product.” Also needed was a robotic platform for pre-clinical testing, practice and training. “Our centre is the missing piece between driving surgical robotics technology forward and applying it clinically,” he says. Professor Samuel Au Kwok-wai of CUHK’s Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, and the MRC’s other Co- Director, explains why engineers, too, needed such a platform. “Beyond just talking, it allows surgeons to explain animal or cadaver anatomy more effectively to engineers, so that engineers can develop hardware that is safe, effective and easy for surgeons to use.” A collaborative culture The MRC’s hybrid operating room is a floodlit futurescape of intra-operational imaging monitors, streamlined control consoles and next generation robotic surgical arms. One of its kind in Asia, it bustles with the comings and goings of more than 70 researchers and practitioners, including 20 to 30 engineers and up to 20 su rgeons f rom CUHK ’s Department of Surgery. It currently supports research programmes for three types of robotic platforms and robotic interventions at different scales, including micro and nano. “The MRC is part of the collective efforts of our collaborators including three topnotch overseas universities,” notes Professor Chiu. These are ETH Zurich, Imperial College London, and Johns Hopkins University. The centre is also wide open to innovative collaborations with other partners in Hong Kong, the mainland and overseas. Shared dreams Professor Chiu and Professor Au, both CUHK graduates, each had a dream to take cutting-edge medical technology from basic research to clinical practice in ways that benefit patients. Their dreams converged in 2016 when Professor Chiu, founding Director of CUHK’s milestone Chow Yuk Ho Technology Centre for Innovative Medicine, was searching for a like-minded engineer partner with whom he could forge new ways to translate biomedical engineering research innovations into medical practices. “We knew Sam and his outstanding work in the US through the alumni network,” says Professor Chiu. 9