Director’s message

The past decade has seen flourishing innovations in financial technology. Among them, blockchain, “the new internet”, is the foremost to reshape many industrial sectors, including financial services, and the society in general. The acceleration of advance brings about an explosive growth of innovative technologies, numerous emerging startups, and widespread applications to banking, IOT, supply chains, etc. It is now the best of times of financial technology, at the age of data science and the epoch of AI.

Thanks to the generous sponsorship from the Foga Technology, the founding of this lab marks the vision and mission of the combined forces from the members to the advisors of the Lab. In HKUST, the hub of technological advance in Hong Kong, we strive to coordinate the research strengths in the academia of HKUST and the industry, to make concentrated research efforts, to explore the unchartered waters of cutting edge financial technology, in the hope of benefiting the society of Hong Kong, the greater China and the mankind.

Nothing great comes easy, and nothing easy can ever equate to greatness. Hurdles and difficulties are inevitable cousins of success. At the time of the establishment of this lab, around the new year of 2019, the crypto market is experiencing a major recession, taken by many as signs of fading irrational enthusiasm. Yet, the innovative technologies, regardless of the ephemeral market, will continue to blossom. And our unending chase to the new horizon of technology will never falter.