President Way Kuo led a CityU team of nearly 550 athletes drawn from senior management, faculty, staff, students and alumni at the Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon 2023. A total of 124 CityU runners ran the full marathon, while 177 and 243 joined the half marathon and 10K runs, respectively, respectively. Dozens of staff, alumni and students in the support team exemplified CityU’s spirit of unity by cheering on the runners throughout the event.

A topping-out ceremony marked a construction milestone for the CityU International Centre (CIC), located at the junction of Cornwall Street and Tat Hong Avenue. At the ceremony, 17 international students marked this special occasion by wearing traditional costumes for a festive parade. CIC will help create a highly internationalised campus with outdoor green areas, an amphitheatre, office areas, meeting rooms, a multi-function area and communal spaces for bringing people together for lectures, events and socialising in a comfortable cosmopolitan environment.

President Way Kuo had a fruitful exchange in February with Professor Michael I. Kotlikoff, Provost at Cornell University, on developments at the Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences. Highlights of Professor Kotlikoff’s visit included his Distinguished Lecture titled “Universities and the Future: Building Excellence through Global Engagement and Collaboration”; a visit to CityU’s Veterinary Medical Centre, including facilities for primary care, specialty care and emergency services; and an interactive exchange with students on the Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine programme.

President Way Kuo introduced the latest developments at CityU to secondary school principals and media representatives during a dinner reception and luncheon in Taiwan. He also shared views on higher education with students and held a launch for his new book The Absence of Soulware in Higher Education during a visit to National Hualien Girls' Senior High School. The book examines significant changes in the higher education sector in Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China and globally over the past five years.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust has donated more than HK$17 million to help run a three-year education project, “Jockey Club Project IDEA,” which is designed to enhance the intersection of arts and technology for artistic expression, art accessibility and social innovation, especially among the young generation and the general public. The structural training in arts technology on offer will equip teachers and students with the knowledge and skills for different media technologies.

The MiC installation work for the new CityU halls of residence in Ma On Shan commenced in December 2022, and construction is expected to be completed by the end of 2023. The halls will provide CityU students with top-class facilities that will enrich student life and learning and will promote cultural diversity and nurture global citizens while at the same time addressing the acute shortage of hostel places experienced at CityU.

A research team led by Dr Eddie Ma Chi-him (pictured far left in photo), Associate Head and Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Director of the Laboratory Animal Research Unit, has demonstrated for the first time a small molecule, M1, that can restore the visual function in the mammalian central nervous system (CNS), offering hope for patients with optic nerve damage, such as glaucoma-related vision loss. This research breakthrough heralds a new approach that could address unmet medical needs in accelerating functional recovery within a limited therapeutic time window after CNS injuries. (See feature story)

Professor Hu Jinlian (pictured left, in photo) of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Director of the Laboratory of Wearable Materials for Healthcare and Professor Zhu Yuntian of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering have been elected to the 2022 class of Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors for their tangible impact on the economic development and welfare of society. Professor Hu is an expert in shape memory polymers and fibres for textile and biomedical applications; Professor Zhu is an experimentalist with a primary interest in the fundamental aspects of materials science and designing materials with superior strength and ductility.

Dr Qiao Xiao, Assistant Professor in the School of Data Science, received the 2022 Amazon Research Award for his “Predicting Successful Scientific Collaboration” research proposal.  His work, related to Applied Machine Learning, seeks to identify and quantify factors that impact scientific success. The aim is to build a machine learning network-based model that helps predict a team’s future success based on the individuals' history and team members’ collaborative success. Dr Qiao was the only recipient from an Asian university in 2022.

This book addresses the sustainability of happiness and well-being in Chinese societies. It introduces various conceptions of well-being, particularly in the Chinese sociocultural context. It then examines the sustainability of well-being by scrutinizing the effects of sociocultural, contextual and personal factors on well-being. The contextual factors are collected in regions and colleges in mainland China, its special administrative regions and Taiwan. These factors include personality traits, strengths, orientations, beliefs, values and idolizing. Bringing together empirical studies and theoretical perspectives applied to Chinese societies, this book offers researchers in the social sciences and humanities a valuable reference work on happiness and well-being in Chinese societies.

Project-based learning (PBL) has numerous benefits for language learners in that it is authentic, meaningful and motivating. It integrates language skills through activities, engages learners in collaborative and co-operative language learning, motivates students to develop digital literacy, and is student centered, thereby enhancing learner autonomy. Introducing projects in language education can be challenging for teachers whose language learning and teaching experience is based mostly on more traditional pedagogical approaches. This publication provides a theoretical but practical guide on implementing PBL by addressing the following key themes: understanding PBL, designing a project, structuring the language and skills support, facilitating collaboration, using digital media to create and share projects, and assessing project work.