President Way Kuo, University Distinguished Professor, was elected International Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE) in June in recognition of his influential contributions to engineering. A CAE Fellowship is one of the highest honours in the world for an engineering professional.

CityU proudly presents HK TECH Tiger, a suite of exceptional programmes that enable high-flying students to pursue excellence, develop their potential, and take courses taught by world-class STEM professors. To cater to the advanced learning needs of elite students, and to enhance their competitiveness, HK TECH Tiger offers a customised curriculum in mathematics, physics, chemistry, English language and other high-quality fundamental courses.

The newly established Tung Biomedical Sciences Centre at CityU has been named in honour of The Tung Foundation in appreciation of the staunch and generous support of the Foundation. It will serve as an interdisciplinary research and education hub dedicated to the development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for the prediction, prevention and treatment of cancers, neurodegeneration and infectious diseases.

CityU shines again in the top 100 worldwide universities granted US utility patents by the National Academy of Inventors. This news, announced in June, places CityU 51st in the world, the highest position in our history, and ranks us top among local universities for the 5th consecutive year.

Professor Andrey Rogach, Chair Professor of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering; and Professor Wang Jun, Chair Professor of the School of Data Science and the Department of Computer Science, have been elected Foreign Members of the Academia Europaea (2021). Both were listed among the top 2% of the world’s most highly cited scientists in 2020, according to metrics compiled by Stanford University.

Professor Sun Dong, Chair Professor and Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been elected to the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in the Technical and Environmental Sciences class. His research focus is advanced micro-robotics and biomedical engineering. Among his most successful research projects are robot-aided automated processes for cell manipulation, diagnosis and micro-surgery at the single cell level.

Dr Nicholas Thomas, Associate Professor in the Department of Asian and International Studies, has been elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health in recognition of his contributions to public health policy and health security. 

A collaboration on geotechnical structures in hydraulic engineering and another on video coding technology won the 2020 First-Class and Second-Class Awards, in the Natural Science category of the Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Science and Technology), Ministry of Education. Winning the First-Class Award was the project “Uncertainty Analysis and Reliability Control of Geotechnical Structures in Hydraulic Engineering” by Professor Wang Yu of the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering and his team. The Second-Class Award was won by a project titled “High-efficiency Computing Theory and Method for Video Coding” conducted by Professor Sam Kwong Tak-wu, Chair Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Computer Science, and his collaborators.

Professor Kuo Tei-wei, Lee Shau Kee Chair Professor of Information Engineering and Dean of the College of Engineering, was awarded the Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in recognition of his achievements as a pioneer in system and software designs of non-volatile memory.

The prestigious Calvin W. Schwabe Award has been bestowed upon Professor Dirk Pfeiffer, Chow Tak Fung Chair Professor of One Health and Director, Centre for Applied One Health Research and Policy Advice at CityU. This annual award honours Professor Pfeiffer’s lifetime achievement in veterinary epidemiology and preventive medicine.

Dr Xu Wanghuai, a PhD graduate from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, received the 2021 Materials Research Society Graduate Student Award (Silver) for his pioneering research on the development of a novel droplet-based electricity generator for advancing scientific research into water energy generation.

At the invitation of Master-Insight Media, President Way Kuo launched his publication Soulware: The American Way in China’s Higher Education (Wiley, New Jersey, May 2019) at the Hong Kong Book Fair in July. The book had not been released in Hong Kong due to the pandemic, but it has been translated into Japanese and published in Tokyo. All royalties from these publications are donated to student scholarships. After delivering a speech titled “What to do with higher education?”, President Kuo had a dialogue with media veteran Mr Man Cheuk-fei and responded to questions from the audience.

A new exhibition “Atlas of Maritime Buddhism” at the Indra and Harry Banga Gallery turns the spotlight on how the Maritime Silk Road enabled cultural exchanges through the diffusion of Buddhism. The exhibition, held from July to October, integrates transnational academic study, archaeology, digital imaging, digital media, and location shooting, among others, through a variety of advanced technologies that vividly and pan-dimensionally reveal magnificent historical sites related to Buddhism.

Four CityU students won the Innovation and Technology Scholarship 2021, receiving HK$150,000 each for activities including overseas exchange, local internship and mentorship programmes. The Scholarship will broaden their horizons, enhance their professional knowledge about science and technology, and help them succeed in the fields of innovation and technology. They are Monica Chan Hiu-man, a Year 2 student studying for the Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine; Harvey Ng Ming-hin, a Year 3 student studying for the Bachelor of Science in Computer Science; Andy Wong Ho-chi, a Year 2 student studying for the Bachelor of Business Administration in Global Business Systems Management; and Xavier Yeung Yuen-hei, a Year 3 student studying for the Bachelor of Science in Computer Science.

In addition, Harvey and Chloe Chow Nga-yau, a Year 2 student studying for the Bachelor of Social Sciences in Public Policy and Politics, received the HSBC Overseas Scholarship 2021/22. Shirley Lai Ho-ching and Austin Lo Wing-hei from the Bachelor of Business Administration in Global Business Systems Management and Tommy Tang Man-chung from the Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance received the HSBC Greater Bay Area (Hong Kong) Scholarship for 2020/21.

CityU was granted a Gold Campus Award for 2021 under the Exercise is Medicine® On Campus (EIM-OC) programme. In addition, CityU was selected for a 2021 Covid-19 Conqueror badge this year thanks to exceptional efforts to promote regular exercise during the pandemic.

Examining creativity in Chinese societies from both a personal and contextual standpoint, this groundbreaking book presents readers with a unique insight into the Chinese mind. It provides a review of the nature, origins, and consequences of creativity, deriving from empirical evidence in the Chinese context.

Specifically, the book unravels the conceptualisation of creativity and its relationships with various demographic and dispositional factors in Chinese societies. The book proceeds to give readers an understanding of how creativity maintains reciprocal relationships with various forms of well-being. The content of the book brings together empirical evidence and theory grounded on Chinese societies to offer researchers and students a unique, realistic view of the nature of creativity there.

This book is a collection of more than 20 articles written by scholars in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the mainland on how to build Chinese bioethics during the Covid-19 pandemic. With different perspectives ranging from basic ethics, ethics of preventing and controlling the pandemic, legal ethics, medical ethics, responsibility ethics to care ethics, the authors raise a number of thought-provoking questions on moral traditions, ethical spirit and value orientation. For example, how should we strike a balance between controlling measures and personal rights?

This book aims to fill the gaps in bioethics, enhance public awareness of Covid-19 prevention, strengthen public health systems, and promote research on ethics. Also, the authors wish to contribute to building bioethics with Chinese characteristics.