It is reading week this week, which means that we have reached the midpoint of the semester. We have been able to run our normal range of field courses, which true to form were disrupted for a day by a typhoon that was just strong enough to tip Hong Kong into a T8 warning resulting…
Read more
We finally managed to hold the last event of the 80th anniversary celebrations. Originally scheduled for the day of the banquet almost a year ago, then rescheduled for April which got cancelled due to Covid, we managed to hold a virtual celebration to honour our most notable alumni. The Faculty has invested in some good…
Read more
Only a three-day working week this week. National Day (71st Anniversary of the founding of PRC) coincided with Mid-autumn festival this year, removing Thursday and Friday from the working week. In Mainland China there is an entire ‘golden week’ of public holiday to mark the National Day, but in Hong Kong we are restricted to…
Read more
In HKU every Faculty should be reviewed on a five year cycle. We were supposed to be examined at the end of 2019, but events intervened! So the review is happening now, a virtual review held online. Our review panel is based on the east coast of the USA, which is just about the worst…
Read more
A couple of notable achievements this week, first one of chemistry professors – Zheng Xiao Guo was elected to the Academia Europea, a huge statement to the quality of his work. Second and so important to their careers we had two members of the Faculty recognised by being given the NSFC Young Scientists Award –…
Read more
Two teaching weeks done now, both offering online teaching only. So far things are going OK. One more week online, then ‘dual mode’ starts. Not sure what I think about dual mode teaching, I am worried that it will produce mediocre online experience as teachers focus on the face-to-face element. We will see!
The first week of the semester has already passed with no apparent issues (or as I said to someone yesterday, no issues that are bad enough to have reached me!). All teaching is online at the moment, but in two weeks we start face to face again. Our online inauguration ceremony was aired this week.…
Read more
The online orientation for our freshmen students was on 25th. I pre-recorded a welcome speech for the event. We also decided that after week three of semester we will be teaching face-to-face and online in so called hybrid-mode. The first three weeks will continue to be online. In my honest opinion we will be lucky…
Read more
I must admit that it seems almost a contradiction in terms to have an online orientation event, but that is what we will be doing. I have done a lot of recorded statements and speeches in the last couple of weeks. There are some welcome remarks here: https://www.scifac.hku.hk/ug-induction-info/welcome and there will be a longer orientation…
Read more
With Adeline’s quarantine over it was time to get back to the office. Hong Kong’s latest outbreak of covid is persisting for longer than hoped and we will now be teaching only online for the first three weeks, rather than in dual mode as hoped. Decisions about the rest of semester will be taken in…
Read more
