New appointment
Professor Samuel Ho Mun-yin has been appointed as Associate Provost (Institutional Initiatives) with effect from 16 January 2017. Professor Ho will assist the Provost in overseeing and monitoring the development and progress of the University's Strategic Plan, leading campus sustainability activities and coordinating other University’s initiatives.
IAS Distinguished Lectures
Two IAS Distinguished Lectures will be held in February. The first one is titled “Convex Optimisation” and will be delivered by Professor Stephen Boyd, Samsung Professor of Engineering in the Electrical Engineering Department, Stanford University. In his lecture, Professor Boyd will talk about the mathematics, algorithms, and software frameworks for convex optimisation, and recent work in this field. The lecture will be held on 17 February.
Professor Dimos Poulikakos, Professor of the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zurich, will deliver the other IAS Distinguished Lecture, which will be on 28 February. In his lecture, titled "From Water Trampolining to Ice Jumping: Physics and Nanoengineering of Materials with Intrinsic Extreme Icephobicity", the speaker will mainly discuss the behaviour of cold (below the freezing point) liquid droplets interacting with surfaces.
City University Distinguished Lecture
The next CityU Distinguished Lecture, “Stan Shih's Philosophy – Reverse Thinking, Stay Positive and Optimistic", will be delivered by Dr Stan Shih on 17 February. Dr Shih is the co-founder of Acer Group and Honorary Chairman and Director of Acer. He will talk about his philosophy on a meaningful and positive life. The lecture will be conducted in Putonghua with simultaneous English interpretation.
France-Hong Kong Distinguished Lecture
Einstein and Bohr had a famous debate on a quantum situation in the 1930s. In the coming France-Hong Kong Distinguished Lecture on 15 February, Professor Alain Aspect will explain the debate and how it prompted the emergence of the new field of quantum information and quantum technologies. The lecture is titled “From the Einstein-Bohr Debate to Quantum Information: A New Quantum Revolution”. Professor Aspect is a Member of the French Academy of Sciences and Foreign Member of the Royal Society.
New Year Party
The Year of the Rooster Chinese New Year Staff Party will be held on 8 February. Organised by the Staff Social Club, the event features a lion dance, distribution of red packets, a lucky draw and special performances. For details, please click here.
Kudos
Fung Chung-kit, Liu Pengze and Zheng Wanying of the Department of Computer Science (CS) teamed up to win the Bronze Medal in the Second China Collegiate Programming Contest Finals (CCPC 2016), which was held in November 2016. They were supervised by Dr Li Minming, Associate Professor of CS. Hosted by Ningbo Institute of Technology, Zhejiang University, CCPC 2016 attracted over 120 teams from more than 90 universities in the mainland.