Research at FAST

19 Institute of Textiles and Clothing ITC excels in research and scholarly activities. From 2018- 2020, ITC received 96 research grants totaling HK$133.4M meaning each academic staff member received more than HK$1.2M annually. Most of these research grants are from prestigious governmental funding bodies such as the HK Research Grants Council, the HK Innovation and Technology Commission, the National Science Foundation of China, and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China. In addition, ITC has led the establishment and management of the PolyU/RCA Artificial Intelligence Design Laboratory (AIDL). AIDL, funded by a HK$500M HK government investment, aims to become the world's first and leading research facility to advance the integration of AI into product and services design. AIDL is expected to start operating in 2020. Our Achievements With our strong funding and infrastructure support, ITC continues to produce fruitful research outputs. From 2018 to March 2020, ITC has published more than 380 research articles indexed by Web of Science, with many published in world-leading journals (such as Chemical Reviews, Materials Today, Nature, Science Advances, Advanced Energy Materials and more). ITC has filed 46 patents globally in Hong Kong, China, Japan, the US and Europe. Beyond such traditional outputs, ITC fashion design academics have held more than 25 exhibitions and shows in China, the US and the UK, some exhibited in the famous Victoria and Albert Museum (UK) and The Hong Kong Museum of Medical Science. Our strong academic leadership is also reflected in our organization of major international conferences including the first Artificial Intelligence on Fashion & Textile Conference (2018), Shape Memory Applications, Research and Technology (2018), The 10 th Cross-Straits Conference on Textiles (2019), The Fiber Society's Spring Conference (2019), and "Designing Future Techstyle" International Symposium (2019). These research outputs have led to more than 45 national/international awards and honors for ITC staff, including prestigious awards such as Second Prize of China National Science and Technology Progress Award 2019 (by Prof. John Xin), Founding Member of The Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences (by Prof. Zijian Zheng), Global Innovation Award of TechConnect 2019 (by Dr Nuru Noor), and Gold/Silver/Bronze Medal of International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva (9 awards in total).