Sharing by Students UROP has provided me with an invaluable opportunity to experience real research from the ground up. The program’s breadth allowed me to explore various fields within computer science and discover my interests. During my sophomore year, I joined a distributed cryptography project, where I deepened my understanding of cryptographic principles and system security. Later, I transitioned into medical image analysis, learning to integrate deep learning with healthcare applications. Through UROP, I gained hands-on experience in designing, implementing, and evaluating research ideas. I learned how to formulate hypotheses, develop experimental setups, and analyze results critically. By constantly reading and reproducing recent research papers, I greatly expanded my technical foundation in AI. Just as importantly, UROP taught me to think like a researcher. During the paper-writing process, my mentor often reminded me to keep asking myself: “What is the purpose? What did we do to achieve it? What were the results?” This mindset has since shaped the way I write both industrial and experimental reports. GU Yi BEng in Computer Science My UROP journey began in my first summer semester at HKUST with UROP1000. Over the next two years, I continued with UROP1100, 2100, and 3100, contributing consistently to the GAInS project. This long-term continuity has allowed me to witness and participate in the full research lifecycle—from ideation and experimentation to publication. The weekly meetings with my supervisor and his Ph.D. students provided a structured and supportive environment. They not only guided me through technical obstacles but also encouraged me to think critically about research problems. Despite the technical complexity of the work, the process felt manageable and highly engaging, thanks to this collaborative setting. The most fulfilling moment was when our paper got accepted by IEEE BIBM 2024—it felt like a culmination of all the effort, patience, and learning. LIU Runsheng BEng in Computer Science During my research experience, I had the privilege of conducting experiments in the state-of-the-art wind tunnel facility at HKUST. This provided me with invaluable hands-on exposure to advanced aerodynamic testing procedures and offered a unique opportunity to witness how theoretical principles are translated into practical applications. Working in this facility allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of how real-world aerodynamic experiments are designed, executed, and analysed to address complex engineering challenges. With this foundational research experience, I am eager to further immerse myself in the academic and scientific community. Last year, I was honoured to receive the prestigious Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme, which has enabled me to pursue my postgraduate studies at HKUST. This fellowship has given me the resources and support to deepen my expertise in aerodynamic and acoustic studies, areas that I am deeply passionate about. YEUNG Siu Ting BEng in Aerospace Engineering I first joined UROP since the summer semester of year 2. The main reason why I joined this program was because I wanted to have a taste of doing research studies, while UROP was one of the few common and easy ways for me to get started. Doing research were definitely not the same as the courses that we used to take for undergraduate study. One of the most unforgettable UROP experiences was how we explored and modified our experiment protocols by tests and trials. Unlike what in the laboratory courses, where we only had to follow the instructions and the results were known most of the time, we had to develop our own protocols and keep reflecting and thinking about how to modify different steps in the protocols to make it suit our project objective better or more efficient. For example, during my first UROP project about clearing nanoplastics from human lung cells, we cultured human lung cell line for our experiments. We did subculture every two days at first. There was one time the typhoon messed up our subculture schedule, and we discovered that the cell cultures could stay alive and healthy for up to 4 to 5 days without any subculture. Therefore, our subculture and experiment schedule became more fixable and efficient. From this experience, I started to understand that doing research was never just copying things from textbooks but really requiring us to keep thinking and modifying what had been existed. Personally, I think this was the most meaningful learning experience which I gained from UROP this program. YUNG Wing Tung BSc in Biochemistry and Cell Biology iii iv
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