Lingnan University hosts "The City Through My Lens: A Social Media Campaign - Video Competition" with an AI training workshop for 18 secondary school teams from Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area

HONG KONG, Feb. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- To inspire students in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area (GBA), unleash their creativity, and engage with the evolving landscape of new media, the Department of Marketing and International Business at Lingnan University organised The City Through My Lens: A Social Media Campaign - Video Competition 2025. Students were invited to form teams and create short promotional social media videos capturing the highlights of their cities. The competition provided a platform for GBA secondary school students to express their creativity and broaden their horizons, while also strengthening the connection between the University and the younger generation. This is the first time the competition has included schools across the GBA, and there were 18 entrants. The championship was awarded to Malvern College Hong Kong, the first runner-up was St. Paul's Convent School, and the other runners-up were the HKSYC&IA Chan Nam Chong Memorial College, Sha Tin College, St. Paul's Secondary School and Yew Chung International School.

The awards ceremony was held on 7 February, and Prof Patrick Poon Shing-chung, Associate Dean (Undergraduate Studies and AACSB) of Faculty of Business of Lingnan University, congratulated all the winning teams in his welcoming speech, saying "The videos submitted by the students convey the creativity and inventive spirit of the new generation. Many of them incorporate technology and AI elements, and use the latest tools to raise production quality, reflecting the students' abilities in research and practice. This aligns with Lingnan University's philosophy of holistic education, emphasising interdisciplinary practice, and combining technology and innovation with a humanistic perspective. The University is dedicated to cultivating students' natural aptitude to meet the demands of the future, and the work submitted indicates that they already have the potential for interdisciplinary modernisation." 

All the teams were asked to produce a video of no more than three minutes based on an original story, presenting the city from their perspective. If AI tools were used, students were required to specify which, and how they were used. The judging panel of professors from the Department of Marketing and International Business assessed the entries on their relevance to theme, creativity, and technical execution.

The judging panel praised the 18 videos for their artistic imagination and depth. Various filming techniques including aerial shots were used, and good editing enhanced the overall quality, demonstrating the technological and original talents of the younger generation in the digital age.

After several rounds of viewing and marking, the video from Malvern College Hong Kong emerged as the best, and won a prize of HK$5,000. The video shows the wonderful journey of a girl exploring Hong Kong's multiculturalism in her dreams: visiting various districts, including bustling Hong Kong Island, the Chinese-inspired Lingnan Garden in Lai Chi Kok, the arts and culture hub in West Kowloon, and the diverse district of Mong Kok. The video captures Hong Kong's unique characteristics, featuring the city's charm and blending Eastern and Western cultures seamlessly.

Delighted, the winning team said "We are grateful to the staff at Lingnan University for their guidance throughout the competition. We faced challenges both large and small, from capturing Hong Kong authentically to managing heavy video files, but our perseverance and teamwork helped to create a video that showcases the city through our unique lens." 

Prof Peng Ling, Head of the Department of Marketing and International Business, said "The Lingnan Faculty of Business hopes that this competition will demonstrate the University's teaching characteristics in the integration of the arts and sciences, nurturing students with literacy knowledge, practical competence, and the ability to think critically. We believe that the creativity, communication skills, and spirit of teamwork demonstrated by students in this competition will lay a valuable foundation for their future studies and careers."

To instruct students in filming and editing techniques, the Department of Marketing and International Business organised a pre-competition "Workshop for Secondary School Students: AI-powered Video Editing (for Beginners)". Led by Prof Qi Suntong, Assistant Professor of the Department of Marketing and International Business, the workshop coached students in the newest AI tools for image, video, voice-over, and music creation, as well as in practical scriptwriting, storyboard design, and film production with cinematic qualities. Students learnt how to use the tools to enhance their storytelling, and also displayed their work and held discussions during the workshop, which inspired them, and encouraged them to use technology skilfully and correctly in both the competition and their future studies.

For award details, please visit: https://www.ln.edu.hk/mkt/lumsm-2025/award-winners.

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Lingnan University hosts "The City Through My Lens: A Social Media Campaign - Video Competition" with an AI training workshop for 18 secondary school teams from Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area

HANGZHOU, China, April 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- A team led by principal investigators Bobo Dang and Ting Zhou at Westlake University/Westlake Laboratory reported in Science a high-throughput platform for engineering fast-acting covalent protein therapeutics. Their work, titled "A high-throughput selection system for fast-acting covalent protein drugs," opens new avenues for next-generation biologics.

Covalent small-molecule drugs have shown great success in cancer therapy by forming irreversible bonds with their targets. This has inspired efforts to extend covalent strategies to protein therapeutics, especially engineered miniproteins. However, their development is limited by a kinetic mismatch: Miniproteins are rapidly cleared in vivo, whereas covalent bond formation is typically slow. In addition, high-throughput platforms for systematically optimizing covalent protein reactivity have been lacking.

To address this challenge, the researchers proposed that precise spatial positioning of chemical warheads within protein scaffolds could enable molecular preorganization, thereby accelerating covalent bond formation without increasing intrinsic reactivity (Fig. 1).

Based on this concept, the team developed a high-throughput platform that combines yeast surface display with chemoselective protein modification to screen diverse crosslinkers and millions of protein variants. By optimizing warhead placement and the local chemical environment, the platform enables rapid and irreversible target engagement.

Using this platform, the researchers developed a covalent antagonist targeting PD-L1, termed IB101. Structural analysis revealed that IB101 forms a defined binding pocket that precisely positions the warhead in a reactive conformation, greatly accelerating covalent bond formation. Functionally, IB101 effectively blocks the PD-1/PD-L1 immune checkpoint pathway and demonstrates strong antitumor activity in mouse models. Notably, despite its short in vivo half-life, IB101 achieves durable target engagement and tumor suppression, outperforming conventional antibody-based therapies under comparable conditions.

The platform was further applied to cytokine engineering, leading to the development of a covalent IL-18 variant, IB201. This engineered cytokine rapidly forms a covalent interaction with its receptor, enhancing signaling strength and duration. In vivo studies showed that IB201 induces potent antitumor immune responses without detectable systemic toxicity. These results highlight the potential of covalent engineering to improve the efficacy and safety of cytokine-based therapies.

Beyond immunotherapy targets, the platform was also applied to develop a covalent inhibitor targeting the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2. This molecule achieves durable viral neutralization, demonstrating the versatility of the approach across different therapeutic modalities.

This study establishes a general strategy for engineering fast-acting covalent protein therapeutics. By enabling covalent bond formation on timescales compatible with rapid in vivo clearance, the platform overcomes a fundamental limitation in the field.

These findings provide a new framework for designing biologics with both rapid kinetics and sustained target engagement, with broad implications for cancer immunotherapy, antiviral therapy, and beyond.

Media Contact: 

Chi Zhang
media@westlake.edu.cn 
+86-15659837873

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Fast-Acting Covalent Protein Drugs From a New High-Throughput Platform