00:00I've witnessed the small patch of coral community disappear over the course of two months.
00:05We know that there is a need for something a little more environmental friendly,
00:09but also specifically designed to customize and to accommodate the needs of corals.
00:15So in year three of my PhD, I co-invented the world's first 3D printed reef tiles made from clay.
00:27I'm Riko, I'm the CEO of Aki Reef. I'm a scientist by training and I'm from Hong Kong.
00:32I was born and raised in Hong Kong in the 90s and I pretty much grew up in the countryside
00:37of Hong Kong.
00:38And I remember going to the mountains, to the ocean, got cut by some oysters and corals.
00:43So yeah, my memories, childhood memories in Hong Kong has always been in the countryside.
00:50That planted the seed in me in caring about generally the environment.
00:55And when I was doing my undergrad at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, my major was natural sciences.
01:01And then I continued my study at the University of Hong Kong for my PhD.
01:06That's where I specialized in coral restoration, understanding how population genetics,
01:12physiology and the combination of eco-engineering could potentially contribute to coral restoration.
01:24My most vivid memory of degradation actually happened in 2014.
01:32When I was diving weekly in one of the coral community sites in Saiko, it feels like going on Pokemon
01:40Go.
01:41It feels like you're looking around, looking for the little creatures that are hiding in the crevices.
01:45So that was one of my earlier experiences.
01:49And then it's later on when I was volunteering for a professor at Bucks University.
01:54That's when we get to see the small petrof coral community disappeared.
01:59So in year three of my PhD, I co-invented the world's first 3D printed reef tiles made from clay.
02:06That experience actually comes from the fact that we failed restoration with the traditional methods like concrete,
02:12metal rebar or the plastic platform.
02:14And because we've seen how corals perform with those traditional solutions,
02:20we know that there is a need for something a little bit more environmentally friendly,
02:25but also specifically designed to customize and to accommodate the needs of corals.
02:31So then we come up with this 3D printed reef tiles.
02:34And I remember in my year three, when we have the solutions and started having data
02:40to prove that this could be a solution that could be scaled,
02:44we realized that as a scientist, we find the problem,
02:48the final solution we publish and the cycle repeat.
02:52I wasn't ready to move on from moving away from this solution
02:56where I know that there's the potential to bring real world impact.
03:01And that's the time that we co-founded RQ Reef as a vehicle to commercialize science
03:05and bring the solutions in the lab to the real world.
03:12So here's our wet lab where we're keeping the corals alive.
03:16And here we're testing how corals perform under different environmental conditions.
03:21That includes temperature, salinity and pH levels.
03:25Other than corals, we also have other experiments running on seagrass and urchins.
03:30They're basically understanding the interactions of different marine ecosystems
03:34and the critical ecological functions of particular species.
03:43Back in the 80s, when the population grow in Hong Kong,
03:47we actually have a lot of sewage output into the ocean, including our Victoria Harbour.
03:54One thing that really drastically changed is actually the harbour treatment scheme initiated by our Hong Kong government,
04:00where there's a lot of water treatment around Hong Kong build
04:04to make sure that we treat the sewage before we discharge it into the ocean.
04:11I've been working in academia and the university for almost 10 years.
04:16And as a scientist, we're trained to think logically, to speak the jargon,
04:21but not necessarily thinking about practicality and bringing the solutions to the new world.
04:27So the last six years has been a very steep learning curve where I had to relearn how to speak.
04:34I have to relearn how to think.
04:36I have to relearn how to engage the broader stakeholders to buy into the mission and vision.
04:43I've never thought about being on the stages like the World Economic Forum, the CNN,
04:48but it is actually a very encouraging example to see how the rest of the world are valuing science as
04:57a major decision-making process,
04:59especially when it comes to environmental issues.
05:18So for the work disguised
05:21in Africa, we teach the whole system of penal people.
05:22Why would you become moral business and advantageous approaches to making them happen?
05:23Because...
05:23Who should be certain, what are some causes?
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