Facts and Figures

RESEARCH | 33 Centre for Genomic Studies on Plant-Environment Interaction for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security With the research foci on the understanding of plant adaptation to abiotic stresses, and the mechanisms of gene regulation relating to plant-environment interactions, the Centre aims to identify useful functional genes and effective molecular markers to help generate new adaptive varieties to combat major factors hampering sustainable agriculture, including water scarcity, global warming, and topsoil nutrient depletion. Probing the Fundamental Structure of Matter with High Energy Particle Collisions As an active member of the A Toroidal LHC Apparatus (ATLAS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in the Asia-Pacific region, the project team has established the Higgs particle’s spin and parity and couplings to Standard Model particles, and designed new strategies for probing Physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM). Analysis tools have been developed, complete with an ATLAS Tier-2 computing centre in Hong Kong. Centre for Medical Engineering of Molecular and Biological Probes The Centre focuses on using advanced sequencing technologies and systematic analysis for new discoveries on cell-surface proteins in cancers that are widely found in Asia. It will leverage the information of tumour-specific cell-surface antigens to generate dual- targeted theranostic probes for molecular imaging and precision therapy, and exploit characteristic features for engineering genetically modified CAR T-cells. Ageing, Skeletal Degeneration and Regeneration The multidisciplinary project team focuses on developing strategies for facilitating skeletal regeneration in bone metabolic disorders and fragility injuries, especially in searching for bioactive and biodegradable implantable materials for temporal fixation and stimulating skeletal regeneration that can reduce the duration of medical treatment and avoid second operations for implant removal, a direction with great potential for clinical applications. Areas of Excellence