The first Nobel given for work in hard science originated and done in China – by HKUST faculty.

People are crazy for the UST Mind – a HKUST product after her first release in US. Let's us imagine that in 20 years' time, people in New York, or worldwide, will line up to buy something invented by us. We have a great Business School, we have Science and technology, and we certainly have money in the region, we can produce and manufacture these goods.

In a glorious morning in 2031, I'll find the name in the newspaper – “China Renewable Energy Company/HKUST (fictitious) obtained genuine breakthrough in generating renewable electricity" The cost will be cut down by half and making renewable energy affordable. The HKUST is creating an enabling environment for researchers and faculties to facilitate the process. The 2nd message is that the largest renewable energy company will be in China.

One thing we are trying to do is to have our science students and our business students get together and found their own companies. Imagine a website created by HKUST graduate - GREEN MIND@HKUST (fictitious) would successfully hoop fans around the world with 1 billion users and "Thomson & Johnson (a fictitious company) announces its acquisition of the website.

"HKUST continues to take lead as top destination in Asia for students from the world – for the 5th year in succession". About 10% of high school graduates choose to study abroad – for good reason. I was one of them, 40 years ago. Today it isn't true. 20 years from now, people will be coming to Hong Kong, to HKUST, from around the world.

I expect students here will have that at the back of their mind. Don’t think you go to Caltech just to study, you can lead!

UST now has close to 40,000 alumni. Today our oldest alumni are still under 40 years old. I predict, 20 years from now, some of our alumni would have found "Highest valued science and technology company in Pearl River Delta". They will be leading what would become the world's biggest companies.

HKUST's EMBA program has ranked the world's no. 1 for consecutive years. It isn't something easy to achieve. The people we trained will become the leaders in the business world. So may be in less than 20 years, we'll see on the cover of TIME magazine - “The World's Top 100 CEO – the Secret of HKUST EMBA Alumni" while HKUST has a significant representation.

Today R&D investment comprises about 0.7% of GDP in Hong Kong, it's 2.5% in the U.S., 3-4% in Singapore, 1.5% in China. What I would like to see is one of our faculties or Deans will be named as the new Hong Kong Secretary for Science and Technology and he or she will announce "Plan to increase R&D investment to 5% GDP and foster further collaboration with the Ministry of Science and Technology of China".

HKUST tops "World Spectacular Campus Setting Ranking 2031", a fictitious ranking exclusively on campus setting.