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The OCES Graduation Party 2025 was successfully held on 29 November 2025. The event brought together graduating students from our BSc, TPg, and RPg programmes, along with their families and friends to celebrate this meaningful milestone. OCES faculty members also joined the gathering, creating a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with our graduates and maintain those important relationships.  Congratulations to all our graduates! May the knowledge and experiences gained at OCES continue to inspire them as they embark on their next chapter. Read more

HKUST OCES, in collaboration with the Consulate General of France in HK and Macao and the HK chapter of the Royal Geographical Society, welcomed two highly experienced French deep ocean explorers from Deep Ocean Search for a sharing session at HKUST. Read more

Department of Ocean Science is pleased to announce that Prof. Julian MAK has successfully secured funding of HK$2.6 million (and around EUR 200,000 for the French side) through the France-Hong Kong ANR/RGC Joint Research Scheme for 2025/26. The funding will support a collaborative research project titled "Modelling the Ocean’s Breath: Improving Mesoscale Representation for Biogeochemical Cycles," which will run for a period of 36 months. Read more

A research team led by Prof. USHIO Masayuki from the Department of Ocean Science has developed a new method for monitoring cetaceans in marine ecosystems. Recently, techniques for analyzing environmental DNA (eDNA)—genetic material found in the environment—have advanced rapidly for biodiversity monitoring. However, detecting cetaceans remains difficult due to their low eDNA concentrations in the ocean. The team developed a novel, efficient eDNA marker to detect cetaceans and applied it to seawater samples from Hong Kong waters. Read more

A research team led by Prof. GAN Jianping from the Department of Ocean Science and Prof. YANG Can from the Department of Mathematics at HKUST, has developed a novel AI-powered tool named STIMP for diagnosing coastal ocean productivity and ecosystem health. STIMP introduces a novel paradigm that imputes missing data and then predicts Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) concentrations across large spatiotemporal scales. Read more

Marine dissolved organic matter (DOM) is one of Earth’s largest long-term carbon reservoirs, critical to the global carbon cycle. A research team led by Prof. HE Ding from the Department of Ocean Science at HKUST has made significant breakthroughs in understanding DOM. They identified biorefractory carboxyl-rich alicyclic molecules (CRAM) and challenged previous assumptions about their stability. Read more

On 9 September 2025, two BSc in Ocean Science and Technology (OST) students, Mr. Horace Lam and Mr. Harun Tin, were awarded The David England HK Natural History Award 2025. This prestigious award recognizes the impressive contributions both students have made to research, volunteering, and nature conservation in Hong Kong. Read more

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) is pleased to announce the launch of WavyOcean 2.0, an advanced digital twin platform of regional earth system for marine research and sustainability. This upgraded platform integrates digital technologies with innovative research, providing the first "dynamic digital mirror" for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA) and China's coastal regions. Read more