HKU Bulletin June 2013 (Vol. 14 No. 3)

Knowledge Exchange Award The Knowledge Exchange (KE) Award recognises academicwork that has provided demonstrable benefits to the community, business/industry, or partner organisations. Awardwinners receive $50,000 to further their KEwork. Faculty Knowledge Exchange Award Architecture A project to rebuild the collapsed arch of a 300-year-old in Taiping, Guizhou, led by Mr John Lin Chun-han, became a knowledge exchange opportunity to engage with the community and re-create public space. The bridge was rebuilt using stones recycled from the broken arch and pre-cast concrete, and students and staff from the Faculty collaborated with villagers and local government officials on its design. Arts This year, the award in the Arts Faculty was shared by Dr Peter Cunich and Dr Si Chung-mou. Dr Cunich was cited for his project to collect oral histories of Hong Kong survivors of the WWII, for compiling the largest collection of publicly available interview transcripts on the war in East Asia. Dr Si has led an eight-year project to enrich the teaching of Chinese in schools which traditionally has focussed on language matters only. He and his team have incorporated literature, history, philosophy and culture into language learning, resulting in 10 books for primary and secondary school students that have been published and distributed in Hong Kong, Macau, Mainland China, Taiwan and overseas. Business and Economics Dr James Vere’s studies on earnings mobility and statutory minimum wages have contributed to public policy debate in Hong Kong. He was commissioned to do two earnings mobility studies in 2005 and 2008 that were widely circulated. He also provided an independent background report and analysis on Hong Kong’s proposed minimum wage to a government commission. Dentistry Oral health was used in a project led by Professor Edward Lo Chin-man to enhance secondary school students’ understanding of biological sciences. Workshops were organised for secondary school teachers to help them use real- life dental problems, such as oral microorganisms, for teaching their subject. The project had the added benefit of increasing oral health awareness. Education Professor Mark Bray’s work on the ‘shadow education’ system provided by private tutors alongside the regular school system has been a wake-up call to governments around the world. He has shown how shadow education follows and impacts on regular schooling and also has implications for social inequality because it requires the payment of fees. His work has been published by UNESCO. Engineering The puzzle of how SARS spread within the Amoy Gardens housing estate in 2003 was solved with input from a team of HKU engineers led by Professor Li Yuguo, who showed how infected droplets were transmitted through the estate. Their work led to the development of ventilation guidelines that have been used by the World Health Organization. They have also advised the Indonesian government on isolation room design and trained 1,500 healthcare professionals. Law Mr Thomas Cheng Kin-hon played an important role in the formation of a law to curb anti- competitive conduct, which was passed by Hong Kong’s Legislative Council in June 2012. In 2006 he was asked by the government to advise on the drafting of the competition law. He was then asked by the Consumer Council to chair its Competition Policy Committee. Science The Faculty of Science launched the Junior Science Institute to provide secondary school students with hands-on programmes in different science disciplines so they can get a better understanding of thematic science issues. The Institute was launched in 2009 involving staff from the Faculty’s six departments and the Medical Faculty’s Department of Biochemistry and it enrolls about 1,000 students every year. Social Sciences Professor Paul Yip Siu-fai and his team are regional leaders in suicide prevention and they have worked with a wide range of community groups to implement a number of successful programmes. These include restriction of charcoal sales in supermarkets, good practices in media reporting of suicide, installation of platform safety-doors, and school and web- based well-being programmes. Hong Kong’s suicide rate fell by almost 30 per cent from 2003 to 2010. Knowledge Exchange Award (Non-Faculty Unit) The HKU Scholars Hub is a one-stop information source on the University’s research outputs and the achievements and profiles of 1,500 professorial staff, which previously was scattered in different systems or not available for public search. The Hub also includes media contact information for each academic indicating the languages and topics he or she is proficient in. By mid-2012 the Hub had more than one million view counts. Knowledge Exchange cinematographer and a window display expert – all running workshops to give the teenagers practical experience of how Warhol lived and worked. “We also included a Time Capsule session,” says Ms Tsui, “where students were asked to bring an item of significance to them to the event. Professor Lui Tai-lok from Sociology and Professor John Carroll from History spent time during the night studying the time capsules students made, and at dawn shared with the students their interpretations of the memorabilia.” Among the many items were a diary, a class photo, a Starbucks receipt, a photo of an egg-tart, a ‘Proud to be Filipino’ hat… Students from the JMSC also got their turn, reporting live on the event through the night. With the guidance of the Centre’s Masato Kajimoto and Kevin Lau, they built communication platforms on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, produced video clips and broadcast multi-media reports while the event was unfolding, as well as editing a video to show participants the very next morning. Says Mr Kajimoto: “It was an opportunity for them to experience the excitement and the pressure of live broadcasting and editing to a very tight deadline.” Future museum nights will have even more to offer HKU students. “At the last two camps the programmes were curated by HKU faculty,” says Ms Tsui. “Next time the HKU students will be invited to curate the event – the opportunities for cross-collaboration are endless.” M Unique journey This time some 600 secondary students from 56 local and international schools participated. Says DAAO Director Bernadette Tsui: “We wanted to create a unique journey for the students as they discover a new meaning to creativity and pop art, media and technology, culture and society. This will be their ‘Night Eternal’ – something they will still remember fondly when they are 50 years old.” HKU student volunteers were assigned to one of four roles: Tour Guides, who partnered with docents at the Museum; Buddies, who took care of the teens; Drivers, who ushered them from one floor to the next; and Workshop Butlers, who facilitated during workshops. In addition to HKU representatives there were facilitators – artists, two music bands, a dance lecturer, photographers, a fashion designer, a After the success of ‘A Night at the Science Museum’ in 2011 as part of the HKU Centenary Celebrations, the Leisure and Cultural Services Department invited HKU to stage another event at the Hong Kong Museum of Art. The result was ‘A Night at the Museum of Art with Andy Warhol’ (February 22 and March 8) which tied into the Museum’s Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal exhibition. The Science Museum night was led by Professor Paul Cheung and organised by the Faculties of Science and Engineering. For Andy Warhol, the event was produced by the Development and Alumni Affairs Office (DAAO) with various departments including the Journalism and Media Studies Centre (JMSC), Computer Science, University Museum and Art Gallery, General Education Unit, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Sociology, History and Fine Arts, plus 100 student volunteers representing nearly every Faculty. Oh, What a Night! The ‘Night at the Museum’ series is proving a hit with the secondary schools and museums involved and with HKU’s growing team of volunteers, and it’s a prime example of our commitment to knowledge exchange. @ A B C D E A F G H C G H E C F I J E D K L D M N D E O D N E L M J C B O N E P F N Q R F O M D D E L M N E A F J S L J L B Q H M N O J E @ J T D U V V F D O J E C H M W F O G J J Q F A B C D E A F S M J T X U Q J O H Q F O G J J Q F G H C H Y J W S B Q E N P G A H A A G D Z M A [ B F D B T 39 June 2013 The University of Hong Kong Bulletin Teaching, Research and Knowledge Exchange Awards