HKU Bulletin May 2008 (Vol. 9 No. 2)

26 27 Professor Leung Suet Yi Professor, Department of Pathology P rofessor Leung’s research aims to determine the genetic basis of gastrointestinal tract cancer. Through study of gene mutations that cause the most common type of familial colon cancer, hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer, she and her team have identified a new causal mechanism through heritable methylation of the gene promoter. Her team also found that one-fifth of local families with this kind of cancer have inherited the same form of mutation from a common ancestor, presumed to have lived around 2000 years ago in Guangdong province. These research findings have helped her team to save lives, by providing a charitable territory-wide genetic diagnosis service for hereditary colon cancer patients. Professor Leung’s other achievements include pioneering the usage of microarray technology to study genetic changes in cancer. Microarray technology can interrogate changes in tens of thousands of genes simultaneously, and can therefore substantially speed up cancer gene discovery and facilitate anti-cancer drug development. Professor Leung has published over 100 papers, including many articles in high impact journals, and is one of the world’s most cited scientists in the field of clinical medicine. She says that she considers research to be an integral part of her life, and is naturally driven by curiosity and passion. She is grateful for the unfailing support that her research team has given her in the past few years, and delighted that its research findings can be translated into practical benefits for the community. suetyi@hkucc.hku.hk http://www.hku.hk/patho/staff/list/syleung.html Outstanding Researcher Awards Professor Alfonso Ngan Hing Wan Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering P rofessor Ngan is interested in studying the atomic-level mechanisms that determine why materials exhibit different mechanical strengths, as understanding the strength of different materials and structures is very important in engineering. Metals are stronger than plastics and ceramics are even stronger, and the scientific basis for such differences goes far beyond a simple explanation that can be offered by considering the bonding strength between atoms in these materials. During his PhD studies at Birmingham, Professor Ngan learnt to use electron microscopy to investigate the atomic processes accompanying a material’s mechanical deformation, and his postdoctoral training at Oxford involved the use of computer modeling techniques to predict these processes. He is thus interested in using both theoretical and experimental approaches to conduct his research. In more recent years, he has focused on materials with nanometer to micron dimensions, as understanding the mechanical properties of these small materials is very important in designing successful devices that make use of them. His research results have been published in top materials science journals, and his work is well respected by materials scientists around the world. hwngan@hku.hk http://www.hku.hk/mech/staff.htm