City University of Hong Kong (CityU) will confer honorary doctoral degrees on Professor Evelyn L. Hu and Dr John Maeda in recognition of their significant contributions to education and the well-being of society.

Professor Evelyn L. Hu, Tarr-Coyne Professor of Electrical Engineering and Applied Science at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science of Harvard University, will receive an Honorary Doctor of Science. She is internationally recognised for her leadership in nanoscale science and engineering, and for her seminal contributions at the intersection of semiconductor electronics and photonics.

In addition to her professorship, she is currently a Co-Director of the Harvard Quantum Initiative. Prior to Harvard, Professor Hu was a faculty member at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), in the Departments of Materials, and in Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1984 to 2008. While at UCSB, she was also the founding Scientific co-Director of the California NanoSystems Institute, a joint initiative between UCSB and University of California, Los Angeles. 

Her research focuses on the high-resolution fabrication of compound semiconductor electronic and optoelectronic devices, candidate structures for the realisation of quantum computation schemes, and novel device structures formed through the heterogeneous integration of materials. She has developed biological approaches to the formation of electronic and photonic materials.

Professor Hu is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, US National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), and Academia Sinica in Taiwan. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Senior Fellow of the Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study at CityU.

She received the National Science Foundation Distinguished Teaching Fellow award and the AAAS Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement. She was awarded the IEEE/RSE James Clerk Maxwell Medal in 2021, the IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award in 2020, and the Eringen Award by the Society of Engineering Science in 2019 for her leadership and contribution in nanoscale science and engineering. 

Dr John Maeda, Chief Technology Officer of Everbridge, will receive an Honorary Doctor of Engineering. A globally recognised technologist, award-winning designer, and celebrated author, Dr Maeda is well known for his innovations at the intersection of design, computing, art and education. 

Dr Maeda was an early catalyst for generative art and computational design for commercial applications across Web2 and Web3. He formerly served on the boards of Sonos Inc. and Wieden+Kennedy, and was appointed as the first design partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers; Executive Vice-President and Chief Experience Officer at Publicis Sapient; and Head of Design + Inclusion at Automattic. 

During his early career, he taught Media Arts and Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for 12 years and served as Associate Director of Research in the MIT Media Lab. As the 16th President of the Rhode Island School of Design, Dr Maeda launched the STEAM initiative, adding the letter A, for the subject of art, to the STEM acronym, which represented the focus on courses in science, technology, engineering and math. He believes that art and design are twin transformational forces in the 21st century, carrying the same weight as science and technology did in the last century. 

Dr Maeda was recognised by Esquire as one of the “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century” and was the first recipient of the U.S. White House’s National Design Award for algorithmically generated visualizations informed by data + AI. He authored several books, including How to Speak Machine, The Laws of Simplicity and Redesigning Leadership. Among the awards Dr Maeda has received are the Tribeca Film Festival’s Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation Award for STEM to STEAM, the Blouin Foundation’s Creative Leadership Award, the AIGA Medal, the Raymond Loewy Foundation Prize, the Mainichi Design Prize, the Tokyo Type Director’s Club Prize, and his induction into the Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame.