One Million 2026 - Shortlisted Teams to Final Round | Entrepreneurship Center - The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Shortlisted HKUST Track Teams for Final Round Competition

Team	Team Description
Advent Gene Therapeutics	Advent is unlocking the full potential of gene therapy with a transformative AI-driven AAV design platform that redefines how genetic material is delivered to specific cells, tissues, and organs. Existing gene therapies rely on natural AAV capsids as delivery vehicles — limited by their inefficient assembly, poor biodistribution, non-specific targeting, and high neutralization rates. Our proprietary platform integrates large-scale foundation model trained on viral evolution database with high-throughput experimental in-house validations to finetune and design entirely new synthetic viral vectors that can precisely target specific cells, tissues, and organs. Rather than relying on decades of empirical screening and directed evolution, Advent transforms viral vector engineering into a predictive design problem. This platform enables faster development, lower cost, higher precision, and ultimately safer and more effective genetic medicines.
Atom Bios Limited	Atom Bios has developed the world's first stable 10nm programmable nano-liposome—ten times smaller than traditional drug carriers. Our breakthrough addresses the root cause of 90% drug failure: ineffective delivery. Current 100-200nm carriers cannot cross critical biological barriers like the blood-brain barrier (BBB), leaving devastating diseases such as Alzheimer's, brain tumors, and CNS disorders without effective treatments. Our proprietary platform achieves the "Goldilocks Zone"—small enough to penetrate the BBB and deep tumor tissues, yet large enough to avoid rapid kidney clearance. With over 24 hours of circulation time and programmable surface ligands for targeted navigation, our technology can "rescue" previously failed drug candidates, saving pharmaceutical companies billions in wasted R&D.
BASIC CONCEPT	Off-the-shelf software rarely fits your unique business needs, and traditional development takes too long. Prompify is the Enterprise AI application builder that lets you build and deploy custom apps before your coffee gets cold. We give non-technical employees the power to build exactly what their business needs to succeed, ranging from collaboration tools and appointment systems to your very own CRM. Stop adapting your business to your software, and start building software that adapts to your business with Prompify.
Cresento	Cresento is developing AI-powered smart football shin guards that combine wearable sensors, embedded electronics and machine-learning analytics to capture player movement and translate match/training data into actionable coaching insights. The platform tracks metrics such as speed, distance, sprinting, acceleration, shot and pass patterns, heat maps, and future vision-based sensor fusion for team formation and ball-position analytics. We have piloted with clubs and academies in Hong Kong and are building an affordable performance analytics layer for grassroots, academy and professional football teams that currently lack access to expensive elite tracking systems.
Hyele Limited	Hyele Limited is dedicated to accelerating smart city development through innovative technologies that enhance water and energy efficiency while improving the sustainability, resilience, and adaptability of urban water infrastructure. Recognising that water supply systems are critical to city operations, where faults such as leaks and bursts can cause major disruptions, Hyele addresses the persistent challenge of high non-revenue water (NRW) levels worldwide. Its advanced solutions integrate physics-based models with machine learning techniques to enable accurate detection, localisation, and characterisation of defects, delivering comprehensive condition assessment across all stages of urban water pipeline systems using specialised software and state-of-the-art hardware.
Lontech	This project, relying on the State Key Laboratory of Displays and Opto-Electronics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has independently developed PVG polarizer holographic waveguides and their mass production processes. It achieves diffraction efficiency >90% and eye-level brightness >1000 nits; eliminating photolithography/etching processes significantly increases yield, and reduces module costs to only 1/3 of SRG. Core materials and equipment are domestically controlled, eliminating supply chain risks.
Refined Motor Co.	Refined Motor Co. is Hong Kong’s first and only fully homologated provider of road-legal electric retrofitting for classic cars and light commercial fleets, established to address unsafe, uncertified aftermarket EV conversions that fail local transport regulatory standards. Central to our mission is accelerating sustainable EV adoption and drastically cutting transport carbon footprints: repurposing existing vehicles via electrification delivers around a 60% lower carbon output compared to scrapping combustion cars and manufacturing brand-new electric vehicles, avoiding massive emissions generated through raw material mining and mass automotive production.
SmartCool Optimizer	Smart Cool Tech is a deep-tech project initiated by an HKUST team, developing AI-powered solutions for smarter, greener, and more reliable cooling plant operations in large buildings. Its flagship solution, SmartCool Optimizer, tackles two high-value challenges: optimal chiller sequencing and predictive maintenance. By combining AI with physics-informed models, the system delivers intelligent operating recommendations for multi-chiller plants, helping building owners reduce energy use, electricity costs, and carbon emissions while improving operational stability. It also analyzes equipment data to detect abnormal patterns early, enabling more proactive maintenance and reducing the risk of unexpected downtime.
Syntrak	Syntrak is a sport-tech startup building smart wearables that convert full-body movement data, provide real-time AI coaching, and enable 3D pose reconstruction. Our mission is to make high-quality performance analysis and coaching more accessible, objective, and actionable for skiers, starting with a skiing-specific wedge and gradually expanding into other sports and industries over time. The product addresses a core problem in skiing: feedback is often delayed, subjective, and limited, making consistent improvement difficult. Syntrak solves this by integrating embedded motion-capture hardware for actionable insights, a 3D digital twin for visualisation, and AI-driven coaching for personalised improvement into a single platform.
YCS Company Limited	Imagine barren desert land — where nothing grows and no one stays — transformed into a thriving source of aviation fuel. This is AGRIFUEL. The EU mandates 70% of all jet fuel to be sustainable by 2050. Yet feedstock supply is trapped: Used Cooking Oil is capped at 6 million tonnes/year — far below demand — while food crops are legally banned. The gap exceeds 36 million tonnes by 2050. AGRIFUEL turns crisis into opportunity. We cultivate oil-rich Cyperus esculentus (20–36% oil) and Elaeagnus angustifolia on degraded desert land — land that competes with no one, feeds no one, but fuels the world.

Shortlisted International Student Track Teams for Final Round Competition

Team	Team Description
BAEPR	BAEPR (Bioresorbable Acupoint Electroceutical-Pharmaceutical Ribbon) is a TRL 3 MedTech platform designed to address the gap between chronic systemic medication, repeated practitioner-dependent electroacupuncture, and permanent implanted neuromodulation. Its first target is central obesity and metabolic dysregulation. BAEPR combines a clinician-placed bioresorbable therapeutic ribbon with a reusable external controller. The target product profile integrates programmable localized electrostimulation and controlled local drug release during a defined treatment course, after which the implant is designed to resorb without removal surgery.
Ecolyte	Ecolyte is developing a next-generation non-flammable gel electrolyte to address one of the biggest challenges facing lithium-ion batteries: fire risk. Conventional liquid electrolytes are highly flammable and can trigger thermal runaway, leading to costly recalls, safety hazards, and reduced consumer confidence, particularly in the rapidly growing electric vehicle (EV) market.
Electromaim	Electromaim turns wasted energy in high-rise buildings into clean electricity. In tall buildings, water is pumped to extreme pressures, and pressure-reducing valves (PRVs) then dissipate the excess pressure as heat, wasting energy every time a tap, shower, or toilet is used. Electromaim's patented micro hydro-generators replace these valves, capturing that pressure as green electricity which buildings can use for cost savings or sell back to the grid. The units retrofit into existing pipes in under ten minutes using off-the-shelf, certified components, and a software portal tracks water usage, energy savings, and carbon data. One 30-storey building can save roughly 900,000 kWh, US$230,000, and 260 tonnes of CO₂ annually, with a payback under three years — directly helping owners meet tightening carbon regulations such as New York's Local Law 97 and comparable mandates emerging across Asia.
MirrorSpace Technology	MirrorSpace develops a spatio-temporal world model that enables machines to understand and reason about the physical world in 4D (3D space + time). Our full-stack solution consists of three layers: MirrorSense, a multimodal spatial perception hardware suite that continuously collects 4D data from real-world industrial and robotics scenarios; MirrorWorld, a world model engine that learns geometric, semantic, and causal laws of physics to predict future states with physical consistency; and application-layer solutions for embodied intelligence, industrial inspection, and immersive experiences.
Waveity	Waviety is an idea to commercialise NTU’s IP on a modular offshore wave energy system designed to provide stable, cost-effective, and low-carbon power. By leveraging the natural energy of ocean waves, Waveity aims to harness the energy to build more energy resilience. The proposed design and development are based on bionics and a novel mechanical structure to address the issues of low energy collection efficiency and low system stability in those existing wave power systems. The characteristics of the proposed system include: a floating rotor efficiently absorbs wave energy from the 3 independent degrees of wave motion freedoms; The self-balancing suspension device based on "multi legged insect biomimetics" improves the system stability. A high-efficient electricity generating system using the sea wave as power source will be designed and built. We aim harness the oceans energy to supply power for offshore users and reduce their carbon footprint.