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Dr. Ruibang Luo, an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Hong Kong, is named as one of the top 10 young Innovators under the age of 35 in Asia Pacific by MIT Technology Review.

“I am very much honoured to have received this award, which not only serves as a recognition to HKU’s excellent research capabilities, but also an encouragement to Hong Kong young scientists.” said Dr Luo.

Dr Luo and his team used Next-Generation Sequencing and Single Molecule Sequencing technologies and developed algorithms for two fundamental genome sequence analysis problems, 'genome assembly' and 'genome alignment', shortening the time required for cancer and rare disease diagnosis and pinpointing the problems more accurately for targeted treatment. His research was commercialised in the market in 2016 and have provided the technology to both public and private hospitals in conducting such diagnosis for patients.

“The government can certainly do more by providing additional funding and support to young researchers working on innovation and technology transfer. Looking forward, my team at HKU is ready to contribute to the upcoming “Hong Kong Genome Project”, which will greatly push forward precision medicine in Hong Kong, and make the technology more approachable by all patients.”

Dr Luo’s research covers a diversity of topics in computational biology. He is currently working on extending the role of artificial intelligence in a localised version of precision medicine.

Dr. Luo received his B.E. degree in bioengineering from the South China University of Technology in 2010 and his Ph.D. degree in computational biology from the University of Hong Kong in 2015. His interdisciplinary research results have been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Nature, Nature Biotechnology, and Bioinformatics.

Please see the press release from MIT Technology Review for details.

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