Now Accepting: Living Lab Expression of Interest!
Supporting the below United Nations Sustainable Development Goals:支持以下聯合國可持續發展目標：支持以下联合国可持续发展目标：
Now Accepting: Living Lab Expression of Interest!
Get funding and coordination support to bring your sustainability innovation to life on the HKUST campus.
The Living Labs Program helps you develop pilot projects that advance your research, generate real-world data, and connect your work to industry and government partners.
Funding: HK$800,000 (average amount awarded)
Duration: 2 years
Eligibility: HKUST Community
How to Apply
- Submit Expression of Interest by Friday, November 27, 2026 (Download Form)
- The Living Lab team will provide comments on the proposal by December 11, 2026.
- Your Living Lab final proposal is due Friday, January 15th, 2027.
Living Lab Benefits
- A Real-World Testbed: Use the HKUST campus as a setting to explore solutions to sustainability challenges.
- Proposal Support: Submit an EOI to receive early comments and guidance from the Living Labs team to strengthen your proposal before the final proposal.
- Pilot Project Support: Dedicated team in coordinating and facilitating your campus pilot project.
- Pilot Funding: Receive up to HK$800,000 to develop and test your research through a Living Lab project.
Sustainability Challenges
Living Labs Program seeks innovative ideas that contribute to making the campus more sustainable, powered by HKUST homegrown research.
Spark your curiosity with the HKUST 2028 Sustainability Challenges or view the past living lab projects.
Projects that address challenges shared by our campus and industry partners will receive additional weighting during evaluation:
- Smart Campus Sensing: solutions that help to understand and study the movement of people through the HKUST campus; the information will help campus users plan where to get food, find places to study, and help campus designers understand crowd flows through our buildings.
- Underground Digital Twin: non-invasive, low cost, accurate visualization of underground features, including pipes and geology.
- Water-Resilient Indoor Plant System: Indoor plants can improve the wellbeing of building occupants; a smarter, more water-resilient system that reduces labor-intensive watering can allow more plants to be placed indoors.
- Next-Generation Passive Cooling: Advanced passive cooling for building facilities that protect occupants from extreme heat
- X-Ray Vision for Sustainable Events: AI-powered vision recognition to power smarter tools for estimating the carbon emissions from events.
View the Challenge Statements and presentation slides
For further information, please visit the Living Lab EOI webpage or contact livinglab@ust.hk.
We look forward to seeing how your research could help shape a more sustainable HKUST campus.
Stayin’ alive,
HKUST Living Labs Team