A galaxy with jets powered by a central black hole.
“A great astronomy centre is not defined by a single telescope, but by its ability to connect people, ideas and discovery across institutions, borders and generations.”
— Professor Bing ZHANG, Founding Director, Hong Kong Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics
Professor Bing ZHANG, Founding Director of HKIAA.
When Professor Bing ZHANG speaks about the future of astrophysics in Hong Kong, he does so with quiet conviction rather than grand declarations. The Founding Director of the Hong Kong Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (HKIAA) is acutely aware that the most enduring scientific institutions are not built overnight, nor are they defined by solitary breakthroughs. They are shaped by the ability to convene a global community around a shared intellectual purpose.
Established in 2025 under HKU, HKIAA represents a strategic leap forward: a new research hub designed not simply to advance astrophysics and space science, but to anchor Hong Kong within the global astronomical landscape at a moment of rapid expansion and transformation.
 Professor Bing ZHANG and his team. |
A dramatic black hole merger, illustrating gravitational waves and deep-space phenomena.
A Journey Full Circle
For Zhang, a Global STEM Scholar and Chair of Astrophysics in the Department of Physics, the creation of HKIAA marks a professional journey that has come full circle. His first encounter with Hong Kong dates back to 1996, when he attended an astronomy conference here as a doctoral student. Nearly three decades later, his return was prompted less by nostalgia than by a clear-eyed assessment of the city’s untapped potential.
“Hong Kong has long enjoyed an outsized reputation in astronomy, thanks in no small part to the prestige of the Shaw Prize, the ‘Nobel of the East’,” he observes. “But our research community has historically lacked the critical mass seen in leading global hubs. That gap is precisely where growth can happen.”
HKIAA was conceived to bridge this divide. By expanding the breadth of research and building a concentrated core of expertise in contemporary astrophysics, the Institute aims to transform Hong Kong from a city that celebrates scientific excellence into one that generates it.
Plaque-unveiling ceremony of the Hong Kong Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics.
An Institute Designed to Convene
What distinguishes HKIAA is its architecture—not of stone, but of collaboration. Rather than operating as a conventional, inward-facing unit, the Institute brings together astronomers from HKU Science, including the Department of Physics and the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and connects them with multiple universities across Hong Kong, creating a shared platform for collaboration and exchange.
At its core, HKIAA is grounded in the fundamentals: theoretical modelling, numerical simulations, and complex data analysis. Nonetheless, this academic foundation is paired with an outward-looking ambition to shape the future of observation. The Institute is deeply involved in the design and development of next-generation facilities, both on the ground and in the silence of space.
“Modern astronomy is inherently a collective endeavour,” Zhang notes. “Breakthroughs now occur at the intersection of institutions and borders. HKIAA is the catalyst that makes this interaction natural and sustained.”
Through colloquia, symposia, international conferences and joint research proposals , the Institute functions as an intellectual commons where ideas circulate freely and collaboration forms a natural part of everyday practice.
A Strategic Bridge to the Stars
HKIAA’s role as a “convener” takes on profound significance given China’s meteoric rise in space exploration. Today, some of the world’s most ambitious observational facilities are located on the Chinese Mainland, and HKIAA researchers are not merely spectators but active contributors to these missions.
From the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), the world’s largest filled-aperture radio telescope, to the Einstein Probe and the Chinese Space Station Telescope, HKIAA members play active roles in scientific, planning and instrumentation. Formal partnerships with leading institutions such as Tsinghua University reinforce Hong Kong’s status as a trusted scientific conduit.
“Basic science thrives on transparency and openness,” Zhang remarks. “Hong Kong’s unique position allows us to bridge the international community and the Chinese scientific enterprise in a way that is both natural and credible.”
The Architecture of the Long View
For the next generation of researchers, HKIAA’s impact is already tangible. Expanded academic curricula and exposure to emerging frontiers offer young scientists a broader horizon and a sense of belonging within a global field.
Looking ahead, the Institute’s growth is characterised by a deliberate and patient selectivity. While major discoveries are expected from existing facilities over the next few years, future projects are evaluated with rigorous care.
“I am often approached by potential collaborators,” Zhang reflects, “but true institution-building requires the courage to be discerning.” Growth, in this view, is not a race for visibility, but a commitment to long-term scientific, institutional, and human value.
With a new physical home under development at Cyberport and continued support from the University, HKIAA is positioning itself for steady, meaningful expansion. It is an approach that favours depth over haste, and connection over scale. As Zhang summarises: “Growth is not about doing everything. It is about choosing the initiatives that will still matter twenty years from now.”
Research in Action: Translating Vision into Discovery
Beyond building platforms and partnerships, HKIAA’s convening role translates directly into frontier science. From patiently decoding fleeting radio signals to capturing the brief heartbeat of a newborn star, its researchers are turning long-term vision into concrete discovery.
An artistic illustration of the “China Sky Eye” revealing the binary origin of fast radio bursts. Image credit: Y Liu, X Yang, Y F Liang, W L Zhang and Y Li (PMO)
Revealing the Binary Origin of Fast Radio Bursts
One such pursuit focuses on fast radio bursts (FRBs), the universe at its most theatrical, appearing as brilliant millisecond flashes of radio light that erupt without warning from far-flung galaxies. For years, astronomers have been trying to answer a deceptively simple question: what, exactly, produces them? A global team featuring researchers from the Hong Kong Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (HKIAA) and the Department of Physics has taken a decisive step towards an answer.
Using China’s colossal Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), often called "China’s Sky Eye", the world’s largest single-dish radio telescope, the team spent nearly two years tracking the behaviour of a known repeating FRB source. What they found was extraordinary: a sudden, dramatic flare in the rotation measure, a twist in the polarisation of light caused by an intense plasma environment. Such a flare is not something an isolated star could easily produce.
Instead, the data point to a far more dynamic scenario, a magnetar locked in a binary system, its eruptions shaped by the winds and magnetic fields of a close stellar companion. This discovery, published in Science, not only provides the strongest evidence yet for a binary origin of repeating FRBs, but also propels Hong Kong researchers, including corresponding author Professor Bing Zhang, to the forefront of one of astrophysics’ most competitive frontiers.
An artistic illustration of the magnetar and the gamma-ray burst jet in this work. Image credit: Yuja Tian and Yuting Wu, Nanjing Zhijiao Cloud Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd.; Scientific concept guidance: Runchao Chen and Binbin Zhang, Nanjing University.
Detecting the First “Heartbeat” of a Newborn Neutron Star
If FRBs are cosmic fireworks, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are full-scale detonations, the most powerful explosions known. Hidden within one such cataclysm, GRB 230307A, an HKU-led research team detected something astonishing: the first-ever "heartbeat" of a newborn neutron star.
Working with partners at Nanjing University and the Institute of High Energy Physics, CAS, the team analysed data from China’s GECAM-B and GECAM-C satellites alongside NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor. Buried in the millisecond glow was a rhythmic, 909-Hz signal lasting just 160 milliseconds, the telltale pulse of a millisecond magnetar spinning nearly a thousand times per second.
Published in Nature Astronomy, this result delivers the clearest evidence yet that some GRBs are powered not by instant black hole formation, but by the brief, intense life of a magnetar newly born from stellar collapse. For Zhang, whose team proposed such a mechanism more than a decade ago, the discovery is both a scientific milestone and a narrative moment: theory coming full circle, illuminated at last by data.
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