Prof. Anderson H. C. Shum 岑浩璋教授
Vice-President (Research)
Chair Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering
CityU Scholars Researcher Profile
ashum@cityu.edu.hk
Biography
Ir Prof. Anderson Ho Cheung SHUM received his Ph.D. and S.M. degrees in Applied Physics from Harvard University and B.S.E. degree (summa cum laude) in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University. He is currently Vice-President (Research) of City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK). He also serves as the Chair Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering in the Department of Chemistry and Department of Biomedical Engineering of CityUHK. Previously, he served as Associate Vice-President (Research and Innovation) (2021-2024), Full Professor (Tenured) (2019-2024), Associate Head (2020-2021) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Assistant Dean (2018-2020) in the Faculty of Engineering at University of Hong Kong (HKU). His research interests include aqueous two-phase systems, emulsions, biomicrofluidics, biomedical engineering, and soft matter.
Prof. Shum is highly recognized for his pioneering contributions, receiving
international scientific honors including but not limited to: The 15th Guanghua
Engineering Science and Technology Prize by Chinese Academy of Engineering
(CAE, 2024), Awardee of RGC Senior Research Fellow Scheme (SRFS, 2024),
Gold Medal and International Special Award in 8th International Invention
Innovation Competition in Canada (iCAN, 2023), Gold Medal in 48th International
Exhibition of Inventions (Geneva, Switzerland, 2023), the inaugural Hong
Kong Engineering Science and Technology (HKEST) Award by the Hong Kong Academy of
Engineering (HKAE, 2023), NSFC Excellent Young Scientist Fund
(2019), IEEE Nanomed New Innovator (2018), HKU Outstanding Young Researcher
Award (2016-17), HKU Research Output Prize (2017), and Early Career Award
by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (2012). First in Hong Kong,
Prof. Shum has been selected as Global Young Academy Member (since 2021).
He was also selected as Young Fellow of Hong Kong Academy of
Engineering (2024); Fellows of the International Association of Advanced Materials
(FIAAM, 2023), Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (FHKIE, 2023), Royal Society
of Chemistry (FRSC, 2017); Awardee of Croucher Senior Research Fellowship
(2020); and as President (since 2021) and Founding Member (since 2018) of
Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences. He currently serves as Editor-at-large
for Droplet by Wiley; Editorial Board Members for Scientific Reports (Springer
Nature), and Colloids and Interfaces by MDPI AG; as well as Editorial Advisory
Board Member for Lab-on-a-Chip (RSC) and Associate Editor for Biomicrofluidics
(American Institute of Physics).
Education
| Ph.D. in Applied Physics, Harvard University, USA | Nov. 2010 |
| S.M. in Applied Physics, Harvard University, USA | June 2007 |
| B.S.E in Chemical Engineering, summa cum laude, Princeton University, USA | June 2005 |
| Study abroad at Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College, London, UK | 2002-2003 |
Professional Memberships
| Member, International Science Council (ISC) Nominations and Elections Committee | 2024-2028 |
| Young Fellow, Hong Kong Academy of Engineering (HKAE) | 2024 |
| Fellow, Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE) | 2023 |
| Fellow, International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM) | 2023 |
| Member, Global Young Academy (GYA), First in Hong Kong | 2021 |
| Member, Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE) | 2018 |
| Founding Member, Hong Kong Young Academy of Science (YASHK) | 2018 |
| Fellow, Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) | 2017 |
| Senior Manager, American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) | 2011 |
Selected Awards
| The 15th Guanghua Engineering Science and Technology Prize, Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) | 2024 |
| RGC Senior Research Fellow Scheme (SRFS) 2024/25 | 2024 |
| 3rd Prize, iCANX Startup Award, Davos Summit 2024 | 2024 |
| Silver Medal, 49th International Exhibition of Inventions, Geneva, Switzerland | 2024 |
| Initial Member, Hong Kong Young Scientist Entrepreneurship (HKYSE) Program, Hong Kong X Foundation | 2023 |
| Star Mentor-Innovation and Technology for Strive and Rise Programme 2022-24 | 2023 |
|
Gold Medal, International Special Award — Romanian Inventors Forum
(FIR) & Turkish Inventors Association (TÜMMİAD), 8th International Invention Innovation Competition in Canada (iCAN 2023), Toronto, Canada |
2023 |
| Gold Medal, 48th International Exhibition of Inventions, Geneva, Switzerland | 2023 |
| Hong Kong Engineering Science and Technology (HKEST) Award, The Hong Kong Academy of Engineering (HKAE), First in Hong Kong | 2023 |
| Science and Technology Award - Second Prize, Basic Research Achievement Award, The Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China (CIESC) | 2023 |
| HKU Outstanding Researcher Award (20-21) | 2022 |
| Global Young Academy Membership, First in Hong Kong | 2021 |
| International Exhibition of Inventions — Virtual Event, Geneva, Switzerland | 2021 |
| Croucher Senior Research Fellowship 2020-2021 | 2020 |
| Rising Start Award - Ton Duc Thang University Scientific Prize | 2019 |
| NSFC Excellent Young Scientist Fund (優青 (港澳)/优青(港澳)) | 2019 |
| Young Scientists Award in Microsystems and Nanoengineering Summit 2019 | 2019 |
| Silver Medal, 47th International Exhibition of Inventions, Geneva, Switzerland | 2019 |
| Research Output Prize 2016-17, The University of Hong Kong | 2018 |
| IEEE Nanomed 2018 New Innovator | 2018 |
| Top 1% Scholars by ISI Essential Science Indicators | 2018 |
| Silver Medal, 46th International Exhibition of Inventions, Geneva, Switzerland | 2018 |
| HKU Outstanding Young Researcher Award 2016-17 | 2018 |
| HK Nominee, APEC Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education | 2017 |
| Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry | 2017 |
| Early Career Award by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong | 2012 |
| Doris Zimmern HKU-Cambridge Hughes Hall Fellowship | 2011-2013 |
| Materials Research Society (MRS) Graduate Student Silver Award | Spring 2010 |
| Robert L. Wallace Prize Fellowship, Harvard SEAS | 2006-2007 |
| Central Jersey Section, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Award for Overall Excellence in Chemical Engineering | 2005 |
| Procter & Gamble (P&G) Award for Outstanding Design Project | 2005 |
| Ticona Award for Outstanding Senior Thesis, Chemical Engineering, Princeton University | 2005 |
| Davis-United World Colleges (UWC) Scholarship | 2001-2005 |
| Lord Wilson United World Scholarship | 1999-2001 |
Detailed contributions and achievements
The most significant contribution to the fields of microfluidics and soft matter is to introduce and elucidate possibilities offered by an all-aqueous multiphase system. Traditionally, aqueous two-phase systems have only found applications in extraction of molecules and in green chemical synthesis. Its potential and value as a system for studying novel interfacial phenomena and for novel nanobiomedicine have been largely overlooked. The ultralow interfacial tension of the system has called for new ways to induce formation of uniformly sized droplets in microfluidic devices. The passivity of the interface allows visualization and recording of sound and music on a liquid-liquid interface for the first time (featured in Asian Scientist Newsroom and an arts exhibition by The University of Hong Kong (HKU) University Artists in December 2016). The diffuse interfaces of these aqueous interfaces create new opportunities to assemble particles and macromolecules, such as enzymes, for forming new structures with enhanced bio- & cyto-compatibility, as reported in our 2016 HOT paper and cover article in Journal of Materials Chemistry B. Aqueous phase separation can be taken advantage of to create multishelled droplets, as described in our 2018 cover article in Small. Based on these pioneering works, we have incorporated proteins into our all-aqueous droplets to form a new type of vesicles, which we called “fibrillosomes” in our 2016 Nature Communications paper. By manipulating the proteins and the network that it forms, we also demonstrate the overcoming of the thermodynamically favored coalescence dynamics, and induce division of emulsion droplets, a finding that we published in our 2018 Nature Communications paper. This inspires new way to achieve biomimetic behaviors in droplet-based materials that have potential for a new class of programmable carriers for nanomedicine and drugs. The all-aqueous multiphase system suggests opportunities for new analytical chemistry techniques.
Moreover, the constituent components of the all-aqueous systems, such as the proteins, require microscaled analytical chemical approach to study, due to their availability in small volumes. Variations in the concentrations of these components can lead to phase separation without changing the temperature. This not only allows a phase-separation-based strategy to modify the structures of droplets, possibly mimicking biological droplets, but it also provides an excellent model system for studying the intricate relationships between interfacial phenomena and degree of phase separation. Such aqueous phase separation has been shown to influence cytoplasmic dynamics in biological cells discovered by other researchers (Sanders et al., Nature 2017). Our pioneering works have earned the honors of publishing in Emerging Investigators issues in Lab on a Chip, in Soft Matter by RSC, as well as in Early Career Authors in Langmuir, by ACS. In addition, we also discovered a way to map all three dynamical states (jetting, coiling and whipping) of an electrified liquid jet for the first time. The discovery, reported in our 2018 PNAS paper, provides important insights for applying electrified liquid jets, which finds application in forming nanoparticles and nanofibers for biomedical applications. Moving forward, we focused on the application of droplet microfluidics to develop disruptive medical instrumentation to enable faster and more personalized screening and diagnostics, as demonstrated in proof-of-concept studies in performing immunoassay of C-reactive proteins (Tang et al. Lab Chip, 2016) and in detecting foodborne pathogens using loop-mediated isothermal amplification in droplets (Yuan et al. Analytical Chemistry, 2018). Furthermore, our team has clarified the physical process by which diffusion predominates in the generation of all-aqueous droplets (Physical Review Letters, 2019) and developed a numerical profile-transformation program that allows the engineering of stable flow profiles over a wide range of flow conditions for complex microfluidic environmental prediction and design (Engineering, 2021). We have therefore contributed significant progress in understanding dynamics at aqueous–aqueous interfaces, which helped developing interface-assisted design of artificial cells and cyto-mimetic materials, fabrication of cyto- and bio-compatible microparticles, cell micropatterning, 3D bioprinting, and microfluidic separation of cells and biomolecules (Chemical Society Review, 2020), with great potential in the fields of nano-biomedicine and revolutionary interface research.
To illustrate with concrete examples, our research findings have been applied in the creation of self-assembling Aquabots (ACS Nano, 2022) and Responsive-Hydrogel Aquabots (Advanced Science, Hot Topic, 2024, partnered with LBNL), a new class of soft robots primarily composed of liquids, with responsive adaptability useful for fabricating minimally invasive all-aqueous surgical devices, targeted intelligent drug delivery systems, and artificial organs, i.e. used as programmable carriers to deliver nanomedicine and drugs through very narrow channels into larger compartments to self-assemble in performing surgical tasks, then dissembled and detached without damage. Another exemplary product advancement would be our invention of elastomeric TransfOrigami microfluidics with embedded stimulus-responsive materials to accomplish plant-like device responsiveness to temperature, humidity and light (Science Advances, cover article, 2022), that is rarely demonstrated in conventional materials for fabricating microfluidic devices, creating new opportunities for intelligent fluidic systems and biomimetic microfluidic devices, e.g., colloidal crystals, intelligent skin/blood vessels and artificial eyes. We also proposed one-pot approach employing mono-sized nanoparticles to self-assemble nanostructures, and discovered that mono-sized nanoparticles would be non-uniformly distributed in two phases and self-assemble into photonic crystals with two different colors that are highly programmable by regulating the colloidal concentration. Imitation of dual-color patches in nature, such as the Papilio Palinurus butterfly, is believed to inspire functional materials designs in industrial and engineering areas related to camouflage, message delivery, and thermoregulation (Nano Letters, 2022).
Besides, our team has also demonstrated, for the first time, an innovative all-aqueous technique to perform enzyme-free RNA cleavage reaction through segregative aqueous phase separation in droplets, suggesting a route to prebiotic compartmentalization during the origin of life (Nature Communications, 2021). On the other hand, our inventions/patents also facilitate early virus detection, treatment of infectious diseases, and preventing future pandemics through ATPS and microfluidics applications: presenting large-scale screening methods for identifying determinants of cell-cell fusion induced by spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 (Nature Biomedical Engineering, 2023) and suggesting treatment of dysfunctional condensates in diseases with insights into prebiotic compartmentalization triggered by liquid-liquid phase separation (JACS, 2023). We have also invented Fibro-gel (Adavanced Materials, 2023, partnered with Princeton University, HKU-Shenzhen Hospital) — a novel injectable and biocompatible all-aqueous hydrogel for therapeutic delivery, medical dressings, wound healing, tissue regeneration; developed high-throughput measurement of elastic moduli of microscopic fibers, e.g. DNA, carbon nanotubes and bacterial filaments (PNAS, 2024, partnered with KFUPM) — for quality sorting in regenerative medicine and intelligent manufacturing; discovered Marangoni transport process that inspires automatic fiber fabrication (Nature Communications, 2022) and proposed new ATPS to reproduce viscoelastic networks for modulating biomolecular condensates in synthetic systems mimicking the origin of life (Advanced Materials, 2022)
Since joining HKU in 2010, I have successfully secured competitive grants as a principal investigator; these include one ECS and 11 GRF grants from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, a General Program grant, a Science Fund for Young Scholars and a Major Research Project (as a key co-I) under the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), a grant funded by the Science and Technology Innovation Commission of Shenzhen Municipality, a tier-3 Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF) and a Guangdong-Hong Kong Scheme (TCFS) ITF, as well as a Health and Medical Research Fund (HMRF) on ophthalmological projects. I am the project coordinator of a Research Impact Fund, and was a co-PI on a Collaborative Research Grant (CRF) project. I have published over 180 refereed journal and conference publications. As of Sep 2024, my publications have led to citations of 11970/8339 and h-index of 57/50 in Google scholars/Web of Science. Our works have been translated vigorously through collaborations with clinicians and industries, including a startup that I co-founded with my former PhD student, while also chairing a taskforce on entrepreneurship to establish a university-wide Techno-Entrepreneurship Core for the commercialization of multidisciplinary engineering innovations across microfluidics, photonics, biotechnologies, etc. through instrumentation via serving as the Managing Director of the Advanced Biomedical Instrumentation Centre. Since joining HKU in December 2010, our group has filed patents for 110 inventions, with 29 of them already licensed. Our patented technologies were awarded gold medal in the 48th, silver medals in the 49th, 47th and 46th International Exhibition of Inventions, Geneva, Switzerland in 2023, 2024, 2019 and 2018 respectively. For the above scientific contributions, I was selected to join the Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences (YASHK) as Founding Member in 2018 and President since 2021. I and my works have been featured in various newspapers and science news outlets, such as Advanced Science News, Wiley Materials Views, Soft Matter Blog, Harvard SEAS Alumni News, etc. I also contribute to the community by serving editorial roles, such as associate editor of Biomicrofluidics, editorial board member of Scientific Reports, editorial advisory board member of Lab-on-a-Chip, as well as reviewing papers for over 100 journals, including Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Communications, Advanced Materials and PNAS, as well as organizing scientific meetings, such as symposium in Materials Research Society (MRS) Spring Meeting, International Symposium on Microchemistry and Microsystems (ISMM), Colloids and Interface Symposium, etc. Former members of the group have also gone on to great success in their careers, for instance, as a co-founder and a project manager in the industries, as postdoc in Georgia Institute of Technology, and as faculty members (associate professor/assistant professor/ lecturer) at universities, such as University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), Nottingham University (Ningbo), Shenzhen University, and HKU Ophthalmology.