President’s Lecture Series
Vaccines have been a cornerstone of global public health and have resulted in the control and even extinction of many deadly diseases in humans and animals. Vaccines have saved countless lives, and our modern and highly interconnected world is unthinkable without their protection. Professor Nikolaus Osterrieder, Dean, Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences, will discuss different types of vaccines and how they have been prudently employed during the current pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 at the President’s Lecture Series: Excellence in Academia on 8 October. He will present the development of rationally engineered SARS-CoV-2 vaccines that are based on a modified live virus platform; have unprecedented efficacy against all current variants; and are safe and easy to produce and store. For details, please visit here.
HKIAS Rising Star Lectures – Physics
At a special lecture on 19 October, three rising stars in science and technology will deliver talks on physics-related topics. The speakers are Dr Li Danfeng, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics (PHY), on “Soft-Chemistry Approaches to Superconductivity in Infinite-Layer Nickelates”; Dr Liu Qi, Assistant Professor in PHY, on “High-Voltage Lithium Cobalt Oxide Cathode Materials for Future Smart Phones”; and Dr Wang Cheng, Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, on “Scaling Up Lithium Niobate Photonics for Future Optoelectronics”. This event follows talks in September by rising stars in chemistry. For more information, please visit here.
Appointments
Professor Huang Yu has been appointed Chair Professor of Biomedical Sciences and Vascular Biology and concurrently Head of the Department of Biomedical Sciences, effective from 28 September. Professor Huang received his BSc from Fudan University Shanghai Medical College and his MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge. He was previously Professor of Biomedical Sciences and Founding Director (Basic Sciences) of the Institute of Vascular Medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. An elected Fellow of the International Society for Heart Research, he received the Hong Kong Research Grants Council–Senior Research Fellow Award in 2020.
Kudos
Professor Julien Chaisse of the School of Law has been awarded the Vitivinicultural Law OIV Award (2021) by the International Jury of the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) for his co-edited book Wine Law and Policy: From National Terroirs to a Global Market, which brings together legal scholarship about trade law, intellectual property rights, and health law and policy of relevance to the future of the wine industry. Professor Chaisse is an award-winning and world-renowned expert on international economic law (trade, investment, and tax), cyberlaw, and international dispute resolution. The ceremony for the OIV Awards 2021 will take place on 17 December at the Cité du Vin in Bordeaux, France.
Dr Ng Yun-hau, Associate Professor in the School of Energy and Environment, was bestowed the Kataoka Lectureship Award for Asian and Oceanian Photochemist 2021 by the Japanese Photochemistry Association at a ceremony on 15 September. This annual award, initiated in 2006, is awarded to a young Asian or Oceanian scientist who significantly impacted the study of photochemistry. At the ceremony, Dr Ng delivered a lecture on harvesting sunlight energy for solar/clean fuels generation.
PhD students Wei Yang, Wang Hao and Liu Yucheng and Lee Yo-che (Information Engineering undergraduate) from the Department of Electrical Engineering (EE) won the Work of Excellence Award in Hong Kong SAR and Macao SAR in the Council of the Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences (CAETS) Communication Prize - High Potential Innovation Prize in China 2021. The winning project, supervised by Dr Tsang Kim-fung, Associate Professor in EE, is titled “Internet of Things Maturity Index (IDex) – IoT Michelin: Best Practices”.
Liu Wei, a Year 3 BSc Computer Science student, has been selected to receive the HKIE Scholarship 2020/2021. Established by the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE), the Scholarship is awarded to three engineering undergraduate students annually to recognise their outstanding academic achievements and encourage active participation in HKIE activities.