The Review 2009

16 The Review 2009 • Teaching Having Their Cake and Eating It PhD students need to explore all avenues to produce strong research. One way of doing this is to spend time in other institutions that have complementary research interests and capabilities. The University formalised such exchanges through the establishment in 2009 of joint PhD programmes with King’s College London and Imperial College. Students will spend significant periods doing research at both HKU and one of the other two universities so they can benefit from living and studying in two different societies. The select number of students who successfully enrol in these joint programmes will tap into different sets of research expertise and materials, and graduate with a degree conferred by two institutions (HKU and King’s College, or HKU and Imperial College). The evidence that this adds value to research work has been seen in the experiences of PhD students who ventured overseas under less structured arrangements, where their research skills and knowledge flourished from exposure to new environments. For example, Jean Millet, a PhD student in the Faculty of Medicine and HKU-Pasteur Research Centre working on coronaviruses, spent two periods at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, staying about six months each time. Initially he focused only on the SARS virus, but at the Institut Pasteur he was inspired to expand his research to include other, milder human coronaviruses and to compare how these different viruses interact with host cells. He expects to complete his PhD in 2010. “HKU and the Institut Pasteur each have advantages for performing certain experiments so there was complementarity and I could take the best of both for my research,” he said. “I also learned there is not only one way of doing things. Even the techniques that are done in both places are done a little differently in Paris than in Hong Kong.” Mei Lijun, who is pursuing a PhD in computer science, was awarded an IBM PhD fellowship to study at the IBM China Research Lab in Beijing for three months. His research is on services computing which enables companies to adjust their business systems quickly. The experience at IBM showed him the possibilities of incorporating 3-D Internet applications into his work. “3-D Internet is often associated with the virtual world. In real life you may be uncertain about whether your design and plans will work, but the virtual world can imitate real life and you can see what works and identify problems. 3-D Internet also means users can offer and use services like advertising and banking in an immersive environment. I didn’t know the possible connections between 3-D Internet and my work before I went there,” Lijun said. “I also learned there is not only one way of doing things” Computer Scientist Mei Lijun 17 The Review 2009 • Teaching PhD student Jean Millet