The Review 2016

First and foremost, the University continued to recruit very good students – top scorers in Hong Kong, Chinese and international curricula, who have come to us locally, regionally or from across the globe. They are attracted by our reputation and the strength of our programmes, which were highly commended in a Quality Assurance Council report in 2016. These are good reasons for selecting HKU, but we believe we can offer more. Starting in 2015–16 the University embarked on HKU Horizons, a programme to ensure that every undergraduate has opportunities for meaningful learning experiences on the Mainland and overseas by 2022, with an interim goal of half of our students by 2019. This programme has multiple benefits. Most obviously, it will make students more globally aware and comfortable in cross-cultural situations. It will also take them out of their comfort zones. HKU probably has the highest graduate employment rate in the world – at or near 100 per cent for the past decade – but one thing we hear from employers is that our graduates could do better in real-world situations such as working in teams and communicating with their colleagues. Greater international exposure will certainly help to enhance these skills. Research is an area where the University does exceedingly well in terms of securing local funding (HKU was the largest recipient of the General Research Fund for the 14 th year in a row in 2016, and we also receive substantial funding from industry sources) and recognition of our scholars (111 of our scientists were identified by Thomson Reuters as among the top one per cent in their fields). We have been building up our interdisciplinary research capabilities over the past decade and in 2016 we made 19 joint staff appointments shared by two or more staff to embed interdisciplinarity even deeper. But we can still do much more to enhance international collaborations, innovation and the impact of our work. Several develop- ments are taking us in these directions. Formal agreements were signed in 2016 wi th the University of Chicago, University of Sydney, University College London and King’s College London. These are all globally excellent universities and we will be collaborating not only on research but also on teaching and learning. The inaugural symposium of our Zhejiang Institute of Research and Innovation (ZIRI) was also held in 2016: ZIRI will serve as a base on the Mainland for identifying university and industry research partners for the University. We also launched the Global Partnership Seed Fund to support cross-disciplinary, multi-institutional initiatives by students and academic staff with partners around the world. On innovation and impact, we have DreamCatchers which was launched in 2015 and expanded in 2016 to provide seed funding for start-ups by HKU students and alumni. The Technology Start-up Support Scheme for Universities at HKU (TSSSU@HKU) programme funds start-ups based on technology developed or adapted by HKU students, staff or alumni. An innovation centre is in the planning where students, staff, alumni and friends of the University can come together to explore new ideas and pursue joint projects. Innovation is also recognised in teaching and knowledge exchange through our annual awards programme, and 70 knowledge exchange projects were funded in 2015–16 in which academic staff shared and applied their research and expert knowledge in the community. Our effort to bring the fruits of our work beyond the campus and academic world is snowballing and will gain further momentum in future. 04 05 Message from the President and Vice-Chancellor