Spark Talks

Prof. LAM Hon Ming obtained his B.Sc. and M.Phil. degrees at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. After awarded his Ph.D. degree at Northwestern University and subsequent postdoctoral training in at New York University, Prof. LAM decided to return and contribute to his alma mater with his passion for research and teaching in 1997. He is now the Director of AoE Center for Genomic Studies on Plant-Environment Interaction for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security, Director of the State Key Laboratory of Agrobiotechnology (CUHK), and the Director of the Molecular Biotechnology Programme in CUHK.

Prof. LAM is a plant molecular and genomic biologist working on soybean research for more than 2 decades. Through identification and characterization of key genes from elite germplasms that may enhance adaption to biotic and abiotic stresses, Prof. LAM envisions to integrate the state-of-the-art technology from academics and the traditional wisdom from breeders for a climate-smart sustainable agriculture. In 2010, he led a large-scale soybean genomic project to complete a whole genome sequence analysis of wild and cultivated soybeans, accomplishing a better understanding on the effect of human selection on the soybean genomes and providing important information and data to soybean research and breeding. The research findings were published as a cover story in the world’s renowned scientific journal Nature Genetics. In 2013, Prof. LAM published a comprehensive review in the renowned medical journal Lancet to provide insights on the summary of food supply and food safety issues in China. In 2014, his team successfully identified and cloned a salt tolerance gene from wild soybean, which paved the way to improving agriculture on marginal lands. The research findings were published in an important international scientific journal Nature Communications. In 2016, he joined an international research team to publish a perspective paper to the scientific journal Nature Plants, discussing on the importance of grain legumes in food and nutritional security. In 2016 and 2017, in collaboration with scientists in Gansu Province, they successfully developed and released three new stress tolerance soybean cultivars that are now used by Gansu farmers. His research journey has finally extended from laboratory to field.

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Prof. LAU Ngar Cheung Gabriel is the AXA Professor of Geography and Resource Management at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He previously served as the lead scientist of the Climate Diagnostics Project at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He was concurrently a Lecturer with the rank of Professor at the Department of Geosciences and Program of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at Princeton University.

Prof. LAU was born in Hong Kong and spent his youth in this city. He majored in physics at United College, CUHK, and received the B.Sc. degree in 1974. He proceeded to pursue graduate studies at the University of Washington in Seattle, and received the Ph.D. degree in atmospheric sciences in 1978. He then went to Princeton and was associated with the research and teaching programs at GFDL throughout the 1978-2013 period.

He has authored or coauthored over 100 publications in various scientific journals, and has been designated as a Highly Cited Researcher by the ISI Web of Knowledge. He was a contributing author of the Fourth Assessment Report, and a lead author of the Fifth Assessment Report, of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was recognized by the Nobel Peace Prize (2007).

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Prof. Mark McGINLEY is the Director of Core Curriculum and General Education, and Professor of Teaching and Head of the Science Unit at Lingnan University. Previously, he was Assistant Dean in the Honors College and Associate Professor in the Honors College and Department of Biological Sciences at Texas Tech University where he worked with interdisciplinary teams to develop, and teach in, a Masters program in Multidisciplinary Science for practicing high school teachers, a Masters program focused on how middle school teachers can integrate math and science in the classroom, and an undergraduate major in Natural History and the Humanities offered by the Honors College. When possible he attempted to take students in the field to interact with the natural world including Field Ecology in central Texas and Tropical Marine Biology in Jamaica, Belize, the British Virgin Islands, and the Windward Islands of the Caribbean.

At Lingnan University, Prof. McGINLEY has led the development of the new Science Unit (initiated in 2015), developed new courses for both the Science, Technology, Mathematics and Society general education cluster and the common core, developed science-education outreach projects with local schools and community groups, and guided the development of the Core Curriculum.

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Ven. SHIH Chao-hwei obtained her undergraduate degree from the Department of Chinese, National Taiwan Normal University. She is a professor of Hsuan Chuang University, where she has served as the head of the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Social Science and as chairperson of the Department of Religion and Culture. She has published 30 books and 67 journal articles.

2007: Received the 48th China Art Medal (Cultural Analysis)

2007: Appointed by the International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB) as their fourth patron. The three original patrons are Dalai Lama of Tibet, Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh of Vietnam and Buddhadasa Bhikkhu of Thailand.

2009: Received the Outstanding Women in Buddhism Award

2012: Awarded “Taiwan Social Movement Persons of the Year”

Since 2012: Awarded “Silver Medal” by the Ministry of Education of Taiwan five years in a row

A veteran social activist, she has taken leadership roles in various social movements in Taiwan including that on animal welfare, anti-legalization of gambling and gender equality in Buddhism. In August 2012, she presided over Taiwan’s first Buddhist same-sex wedding, which became the only piece of news from Taiwan that entered the New York Time’s top 100 stories that year.

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Dr SO Ho Wai, Suzanne is Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She trained in experimental psychology and clinical psychology at University of Oxford and The Chinese University of Hong Kong respectively, and is a Hong Kong Psychological Society Registered Psychologist (Clinical Psychology). Before joining the university, Dr SO worked as a clinical psychologist at public psychiatric services, serving young people who were affected by a range of psychiatric disorders and distress, as well as their families. She wrote a PhD on delusions and associated psychological processes at King's College London. Her research interests are cognitive model of psychosis, cognitive-behavioural therapy, and the use of mobile phone apps as assessment and treatment. At The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Dr SO lectures on psychological assessment and treatment, and is Clinical Tutor for the MSSc program in Clinical Psychology. She maintains a small clinical practice, and is keen to find better ways to train future therapists. She is recipient of 2017 UGC Teaching Award (Early Career Category), 2016 CUHK University Education Award, 2016 CUHK Young Researcher Award, and 2016 CUHK Faculty of Social Science Exemplary Teaching Award. She is currently Associate Fellow of the Hong Kong Psychological Society and the British Psychological Society.

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Prof. TAM Hong Ming, Tony is Professor of Sociology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research areas include social stratification, education, labor market, health inequality, and economic sociology. He obtained his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago under the mentorship of James S. Coleman and Edward O. Laumann in 1990. He was an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Harvard University until joining Academia Sinica (Taiwan) in 1995. He was a winner of the Distinguished Scholarly Contribution Award from the National Research Council and the prestigious Academia Sinica Publication Award for Young Researchers.

His publications have appeared in top sociology journals (such as American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Sociology of Education) and top public health journals (such as International Journal of Epidemiology, Environmental Health Perspectives, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Sleep). He has served on the editorial board of major sociology journals, including two terms on the Consulting Editorial Board of the American Journal of Sociology, three terms on the Editorial Board of Sociology of Education.

From 2001 to 2008, he was co-PI of the Taiwan Education Panel Survey (TEPS) and he is a co-investigator of the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS). His current projects include specifying the importance of non-cognitive skills in social stratification, social determinants of subjective well-being and health, and the subjective consequences of competition, stratification, and inequality. Methodologically, his projects exploit strategic extensions of traditional household surveys, large online surveys, large online behavioral experiments, large biosocial surveys, and behavioral game measurement of fundamental social preferences. He also conducts comparative research on the United States, Europe, and Chinese societies.

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