HKU Bulletin May 2009 (Vol. 10 No. 2)

24 25 Outstanding Researcher Award The Outstanding Researcher Award is granted in recognition of exceptional research accomplishments of international merit. Award winners receive a monetary award of $250,000 to further their research. He has co-authored a monograph entitled Robust Control and Filtering of Singular Systems (Springer 2006) and many journal articles in these areas. His articles in stability analysis and system synthesis have been widely cited by researchers. On the professional service side, he is currently serving eight SCI journal editorial boards, including Automatica , IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing , and the Journal of Sound and Vibration . He was editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Signal Proceedings: Control Theory of Applications . He is a member of the Engineering Panel of the Research Grants Council. The forces that drive Professor Lam to conduct research are his unending curiosity about nature and his never-diminishing desire for knowledge. When working with young researchers, he holds to Confucius’ words: “Now the humane man, wishing himself to be established, sees that others are established and, wishing himself to be successful, sees that others are successful.” Professor Luke Kang Kwong School of Humanities Professor Luke’s research spans a wide range of topics from Phonology and Syntax to Sociolinguistics, Computational Linguistics and Neurolinguistics. In spite of their apparent variety, these topics can all be traced back to a common theme – that of the interface between language structure and language function. Professor Luke has researched the complicated ways in which prosody and word order variation in different languages ( including Chinese, Engl ish, French, German, Greek and Japanese) are employed to serve cognitive and social functions. He has also conducted groundbreaking work on the neuro- cognitive processing of syntax and semantics in Chinese and English bilinguals. A firm believer in the importance of using new techniques and innovative methodologies to crack old puzzles, Professor Luke’s research is characterized by a high degree of interdisciplinarity. He has a close working relationship with specialists in such diverse fields as Psychology, Sociology, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Natural Language Processing in many parts of the world. Professor Luke gained his PhD on a Commonweal th Scholarship from the University of York in the United Kingdom, in 1988. He was appointed Founding Head of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Hong Kong in 1997. Professor Tse Hung Fat William M.W. Mong Professor in Cardiology, Department of Medicine Professor Tse is a pioneer in stem cells and cardiovascular regenerative medicine, and produced the first randomized controlled study in humans on using bone marrow stem cells to treat ischemic heart disease. Recently he has extended his investigations into the use of gene-based and embryonic stem cell-based therapy for cardiac regeneration. His research interests also cover cardiac pacing and electrophysiology and vascular biology, and he established the first animal laboratory in Hong Kong for research and training in cardiovascular medicine. Professor Tse is keen to develop the potential of translational research and he believes the key to this is close collaboration and interaction between scientists, engineers and clinicians, as well as his enthusiastic research students. “My long-term mission is to develop novel gene and/or cell therapies that can potentially revolutionize the practice of cardiovascular medicine,” he said. Professor Tse was awarded the Outstanding Young Researcher Award in 2003 and is also Deputy Director of the Research Centre of Heart, Brain, Hormone and Healthy Aging at HKU. Professor Wong Wing Tak Department of Chemistry Professor Wong’s work has had a seminal impact in the field of chemical imaging and received much attention from the global scientific community. His work on MRI contrast agents has also shown commercial potential and generated several excellent scientific papers. He has been granted three international and US patents and his paper citation is cited among the top 1% in the world by ISI Essential Science Indicators . Professor Wong’s research interests include metal cluster and nanoparticles, X-ray crystallography and lanthanide chemistry, as well as MRI contrast agents and luminescent probes for chemical imaging. He has published more than 350 research papers in these areas, at the same time training 30 PhD and four MPhil graduates, many of whom now work as academics or professional chemists. Professor Wong obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge, after completing a BSc and MPhil at HKU. He was named an Outstanding Young Research at HKU in 2001 and Outstanding Research Student Supervisor in 2003, and was awarded a Croucher Senior Research Fellowship in 2002. He believes the honours and credit he has received should be shared with his research students, because of their contributions to his success. Dr Jin Dong Yan Department of Biochemistry An Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Dr Jin’s research focuses primarily on the molecular basis of viral oncogenesis. He uses a combination of biochemical ad genetic approaches to conduct basic research on cancer-related genes and mechanisms with the aim of applying the knowledge gained to therapeutic interventions of human cancer. In his study of human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 oncoprotein Tax in 1998, he indentified a cellular protein named MAD1, a key component of the mitotic checkpoint that guards against abnormal division of cells. In 2006, his group characterized another centrosomal target of Tax protein that contributes to the development of abnormal numbers of chromosomes in leukemia cells. More recent work from his team in 2008 revealed a new mechanism in which the Epstein-Barr virus uses a viral microRNA molecule to promote the survival of tumour cells in nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Dr Jin has received a National Natural Science Award of China (2001), a Scholar Award from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, USA (2001-2006), and a New Foreign Investigator Award under the Global Health Research Initiative Program of the National Institute of Health (2002-2008). Professor James Lam Department of Mechanical Engineering Croucher Fellow and Scholar, Professor Lam is interested in researching model reduction, robust control and filtering of dynamic systems. He has developed fundamental stability and synthesis theories for different classes of dynamic systems including delay, singular and stochastic systems. Dr Jin Dong Yan Professor James Lam Professor Luke Kang Kwong Professor Tse Hung Fat Professor Wong Wing Tak TEACHING AND RESEARCH