Prolific research on a barren rock

TY - JOUR

T1 - Prolific research on a barren rock

AU - Ching-Wu Chu, Paul

N1 - Funding Information: that would follow and the subsequent need to replace the existing old industries. His answer to these challenges was to launch a high-tech revolution by establishing a new university. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) was thus born in 1989 and enrolled its first students in 1991. It was the only tertiary institution created and mandated expressly to contribute to Hong Kong’s social and economic development through science and technology. A US-trained physicist administrator, Chia-Wei Woo, was recruited as the founding president of the university. He brought in an American-style system for academic governance and for faculty evaluation and promotion. It is safe to say it was HKUST that brought the research culture to Hong Kong. Over the past 20 years, Hong Kong’s research in all its universities has come of age by attracting world scholars and equipping them with state-of-the-art facilities, taking advantage of the unique strengths of Hong Kong, namely its open society, financial might and rule of law. For instance, a world-renowned geneticist, Lap-Chee Tsui, was recruited from the University of Toronto in 2002 as the President of HKU, and Lawrence Lau, a world-renowned economist, was recruited from Stanford in 2004 as the Vice Chancellor of CUHK. The Hong Kong SuperNet, the first internet service provider in Hong Kong, was developed by Vincent Shen in 1993, and the operational wind-shear warning system that has made Hong Kong’s International Airport one of the safest in the world was co-developed by Jay-Chung Chen in the same year; both Shen and Chen are faculty members of HKUST. Mention must also be made of the world’s smallest single-walled carbon nanotubes, synthesized and studied by Ping Sheng and his co-workers at HKUST in 2001. A world-class research community is forming. The Financial Times listed three of the eight universities in Hong Kong among their top 100 global rankings last year, with the joint Kellogg– HKUST EMBA programme rated number one in the world. The quintessential spirit of capitalism is the individual’s rational pursuit of economic gain. In Hong Kong, which enjoys a reputation as the world’s freest economy right on the doorstep of the world’s largest socialist economy, the practice of the world’s purest form of capitalism has resulted in a science and technology culture that both drives and limits its economic and social growth. It is often said that Hong Kong does not have a strong science and technology culture. Indeed, that was true before 1997. In a belated awakening to the promise of a knowledge-based society, Hong Kong has leaped ahead, with the bulk of its science and technology infrastructure being put in place only in the past decade. This includes the restructuring of higher education, the Research Grant Council, the Innovation and Technology Commission, Hong Kong’s five Research and Development Centers, the Innovation and Technology Fund, the Applied Research Fund, the Science and Technology Parks, the Applied Science and Technology Research Institute, the Hong Kong Jockey Club Institute of Chinese Medicine, and the Cyberport. The HKSAR Government recognizes that economic reform cannot be achieved without educational reform. A restructuring of higher education was launched in 2004 to initiate a broad-based learning programme to train students in creative and critical thinking for the knowledge-based society, and to align Hong Kong’s undergraduate programme with that being adopted by the mainland, the United States, Japan and many others. Under this programme, all those starting

PY - 2008/8

Y1 - 2008/8

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=49249089179&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=49249089179&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1038/nmat2229

DO - 10.1038/nmat2229

M3 - Comment/debate

C2 - 18654577

AN - SCOPUS:49249089179

SN - 1476-1122

VL - 7

SP - 600

EP - 602

JO - Nature Materials

JF - Nature Materials

IS - 8

ER -