Hong Kong should capitalise on the opportunities arising from US-China tensions to attract more talent to its academic and tech sectors, heads of the city’s top medical schools have said, ahead of a visit to the world’s largest biotechnology event in Boston.

Representatives from the medical faculties of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) will join the delegation of the government-funded Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) attending BIO 2025 between June 16 and 19.

The event is reportedly the largest globally for the biotechnology industry.

Responding to whether the worsening US-China rivalry had affected their work, Professor Wallace Lau Chak-sing, dean of medicine at HKU, said the tensions had instead provided incentives for talent to join Hong Kong’s institutions.

“We continue to have many experts from the US supporting our work in our school of biomedical engineering. We also have an international advisory board in which many of the advisers are experienced professors from the US,” he said.

“We should not be too worried about the situation. We should take advantage of different circumstances to attract talent.”