Honorary University Fellows
Mrs Carol Yu is a respected philanthropist and fundraiser, and holds a BA from Mills College in California, USA.
She is especially concerned about global health threats due to emerging infectious diseases caused by novel microbial agents, such as bird flu and SARS. The support she provided the HKU SARS Fund with in 2003 resulted in the establishment of the Carol Yu Centre for Infection, a research centre for infectious disease research and education. She takes great personal interest in the Centre’s work, making personal visits to the laboratories and encouraging its researchers and students. As a result of her patronage, the Centre has published over a hundred internationally peer-reviewed articles in leading scientific journals.
Together with her husband, HKU alumnus Professor Richard Yu Yue Hong, the Yu couple have been staunch supporters of the University and are both Honorary Patrons of the HKU Foundation, establishing the Yu Professorship in Nephrology in 2008 and lending their support towards research in nephrology.
Other universities in Hong Kong have also been beneficiaries, with, for example, the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s establishment of the Carol Yu Scholarship in the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, and the Carol and Richard Yu Peritoneal Dialysis Research Centre, which aims to improve treatment for renal failure patients by providing more effective and high quality peritoneal dialysis.
Citation written and delivered by Professor Gabriel LEUNG, Dean of Medicine
Birth and breeding may have endowed her with many gifts; what she has made of those advantages sets her apart as a social philanthropist widely and dearly admired. Carol Wilma YU LOUEY Kwok Won has always held a deep conviction about the noblesse oblige of responding to Hong Kong’s contemporary societal needs. The H5N1 influenza outbreak in 1997 and the 2003 SARS epidemic were indelible lessons etched into our collective psyche. Inspired by the University’s notable contributions in understanding the science of emerging infections that are matched by a superlative clinical complement in the best tradition of the clinician-scientist model, our honorand brought to bear her considerable largesse in establishing the Carol Yu Centre for Infection in 2008. Its impact has been immense since, most recently put into practice once again against the H7N9 influenza outbreak towards the mainland’s successful control effort.
Mrs Yu is joined by her husband Professor Richard YU Yue Hong, a towering authority in renal medicine and an alumnus of the medic class of 1958, in her quest for doing good for medical science, here at the Li Ka Shing Faculty as well as at our sister institution on the other side of the Lion Rock. The couple personify a synergistic symbiosis of mutually reinforcing positive influence. Without either, Hong Kong medicine and public health would be all the poorer for it, particularly in their chosen fields of concern in nephrology and infectious diseases.
If wife and husband were yin and yang, surely mother and son must be yuen yeung (鴛鴦), the uniquely local beverage of choice. Mrs Yu and son Douglas Young, a creative icon, reflect in each other’s impeccable sense of style, élan and joie de vivre, and above all in their common faith in the Hong Kong identity. Whether at the mahjong table or sauntering through one of Douglas’s Goods of Desire homeware stores or the Hong Kong Street Culture Museum, Mrs Yu exudes elegance in her interpretation of Hong Kong’s unique cultural legacy.
Kipling’s musings on the East and West where “never the twain shall meet” have met a formidable pair in mother and son. Together they have inspired an entire movement of feeling confident and having fun about being a true Hongkonger.
Our honorand may not exactly be one of the people but she is most certainly an extraordinary lady for the people. For her quiet works of charity, her firm belief in philanthropy as a privilege for the privileged to do good, and her proud embodiment of the “Hong Kong way”, it remains my honour, Mr Pro-Chancellor, to present Mrs Carol Wilma Yu Louey Kwok Won for the Honorary University Fellowship.