The Computer Science Department of HKU and BGI-Shenzhen have been working closely on the algorithmic, analytics and engineering aspects of computing technologies for the enhancement of the throughput and quality of the analysis of the next-generation sequencing data since 2008. The collaboration has led to a number of important software tools such as SOAP2 (2008), SOAP3 (2011) and SOAP3-dp (2012) for short read alignment; SOAPsplice (2010) and SOAPfusion (2011) for RNA-seq analysis; SOAPdenovo2 (2012) and IDBA series for genome assembly. To enhance the collaboration, both parties decided to establish a joint research laboratory in 2012 which is HKU-BGI BAL (Bioinformatics Algorithms and Core Technology Research Laboratory).