Message from Program Director

Welcome to the Individualized Interdisciplinary Major (IIM) Program at HKUST.

It is a privilege to take on the role of Program Director, alongside Dr Rong Zhang, who joins us as Undergraduate Program Coordinator. Together, we are honoured to carry forward the strong foundation laid by Professor King Chow, who founded IIM and guided it through its formative years. His vision and dedication have shaped IIM into a distinctive part of interdisciplinary education at HKUST.

IIM is grounded in a simple conviction: education should not only prepare students for the world as it is, but give them the intellectual freedom to imagine what it could become.

The world does not organize its most important questions by academic discipline. The challenges and possibilities that will shape our future increasingly emerge at the intersections of technology and humanity, science and society, creativity and computation. They ask us to see beyond established boundaries and to bring different ways of knowing into conversation. IIM is built for these intersections.

An individualized major is therefore not simply a selection of courses from different departments. It starts with a question, an intellectual ambition, or a problem that matters deeply to you, and asks what knowledge you need to pursue it. Rather than letting disciplinary boundaries define the questions you can ask, IIM lets your questions shape the boundaries of your education.

That freedom is both an opportunity and a responsibility. IIM students can draw on courses, knowledge, and mentorship across departments and Schools at HKUST, and even across universities. But interdisciplinarity requires more than breadth. It requires intellectual coherence: understanding what different disciplines can contribute, where their limits lie, and why they need to come together.

You will not undertake this journey alone. Faculty advisors and the IIM community will work closely with you to turn curiosity into a rigorous academic pathway. Along the way, we hope you will discover not only connections between fields, but also something about yourself: the questions you care about, the strengths you can develop, and the contribution you want to make.

Universities have traditionally asked students to choose among fields that already exist. IIM invites you to begin somewhere different: with the future you want to understand or help create.

As you explore IIM, we invite you to ask not simply which major you would like to study, but which questions might be worthy of your university years.

Prof Celine SONG

Program Director of IIM