This was the first week of the new semester crammed in before Chinese New Year. We saw a resurgence in the protestor activity with new graffiti and the rebuilding on the Lennon Wall. But the main news has been the building epidemic of the Wuhan coronavirus which has now appeared in Hong Kong with suspected…
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This week has been the last one before the start of a new semester. I have to admit to being nervous about how this one might work out. I held a short briefing session for staff to allow discussion about how people were feeling before stepping into the lecture theatre next week. At least after…
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After a short break over Christmas I returned just after New Year. My first significant activity this year was a four day trip to Palawan in the Philippines. With a small group of ecologists I visited a CERS site to determine whether we could make use of this location for teaching or research purposes. We…
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I rather enjoy the annual Faculty Retreat. It is one of few opportunities for the faculty to get together en masse and to consider what it is trying to achieve together. This time we went to Sha Tin, and about two-thirds of the faculty turned up.
Rather sadly, due to concerns about the current unrest in Hong Kong we had to cancel our physical congregation this year, but today we held a virtual one to ensure that our 2018/19 graduands can graduate.
If you have been following the news from Hong Kong at all you will know that the protest movement has come to the university campuses. HKU was the site of some problems and some of us spent a long week trying to talk to protesting students and attempting to de-escalate the situation. In the end…
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The Faculty had three of its young stars recognised as Excellent Young Scientists by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. This is a major achievement for them and the Faculty. Dr Li Xiang David from the Department of Chemistry, Dr Wu Jin from the School of Biological Sciences and Dr Zhang Binzheng from the…
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At the Science Faculty’s annual prize presentation ceremony I gave out prizes to 100 students who are on the Dean’s list for their academic performance and to staff for research, knowledge exhange and teaching excellences. Well done to all
We are hosting Professor Ben Feringa this week. He is one of our Distinguished Visiting Scientists and one of the winners of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on molecular machines. More importantly he is a nice guy!
The Faculty won three of the 2019 NSFC Excellent Young Scientist Awards – this is out of seven in HKU and 25 in Hong Kong and Macao. This superb result is great news for our young colleagues. The successful individuals were David Li of Chemistry, Binzheng Zhang of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Jin Wu…
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