Projects and Events

「InnoCarnival 2021」Online Public Talks

21 Sep 2021

The Hong Kong Academy of Sciences will organise 4 online public lectures at the “InnoCarnival 2021”.  These include “From SARS to COVID-19” by Prof Kwok Yung YUEN, Henry Fok Professor in Infectious Diseases, Chair of Infectious Diseases, Department of Microbiology, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine of The University of Hong Kong, “Big Data in Urban Planning” by Prof Anthony G.O. YEH, Chan To Haan Professor in Urban Planning and Design,  Chair Professor in Urban Planning and Geographic Information Systems, Department of Urban Planning and Design of The University of Hong Kong, “Saving the Planet with Science and Technology”  by Prof Amos TAI, Associate Professor, Earth System Science Programme, Faculty of Science of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and “From Invisibility Cloaks to Metalenses” by Prof Jensen LI, Professor, Department of Physics, School of Science of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

For more information about the public talks, please visit the website: https://innocarnival.hk/

Topic: “From SARS to COVID-19”
Brief description: The pandemic of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory 65 syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has affected around 180 million people with over 3.9 million deaths in the last 17 months (up to Jun 2021). Border control and social distancing measures have severely impacted on the global socioeconomic activities and mental health. We review the sequence of events and our research findings from 2003 to 2020 with relevance to epidemiological control and clinical management.
Date/time: 25/10/2021 / 10:00-11:00
Speaker:
Prof Kwok-yung YUEN
MBBS, MD, FHKAM, HKCP, FRCS(Glas), FRCPath(UK), FRCP(Edin& Lond)
Henry Fok Professor in Infectious Diseases;
Chair of Infectious Diseases, Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong;
Co-Director, State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases, The University of Hong Kong;
Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (Basic Medicine and Health);
Founding Member of Hong Kong Academy of Sciences;
Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology

Prof Kwok Yung Yuen graduated from the Medical School at the University of Hong Kong and was awarded State Scientific and Technological Progress Award (Special class), the Justice of Peace by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, and Gold & Silver Bauhinia Star Awardee of the HKSAR. He is also Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (Lond, Edin), Surgeons (Glas) and Pathologists (UK). In the outbreak of avian influenza virus H5N1 in 1997 in Hong Kong, Prof KY Yuen was the first to report in Lancet about the unusual clinical severity and high mortality of infected patients which could be identified by the in-house designed molecular test at his laboratory. During the outbreak of SARS in 2003, he led his team in the discovery of the SARS coronavirus successfully and was honoured as Asian heroes of the year in April by Time Asia Magazine. He has also led his team in the discovery of over 60 novel disease agents, 10 bacteria, 4 fungi and 2 parasites. His 1059 publications with over 66,000 citations are mainly related to the research of novel microbes or emerging infectious disease agents.



Topic: “Big Data in Urban Planning”
Brief description: With the development of smart technologies and smart cities, big data are more readily available than before.  Urban planning can make use of big data to plan for better cities. Big data can be used for land use - transport planning, evaluation of plan implementation, planning for sustainable communities and job-housing balance.
Date/time: 27/10/2021 11:00-12:00
Speaker:
Prof Anthony G.O. YEH
Chan To Haan Professor in Urban Planning and Design
Chair Professor in Urban Planning and Geographic Information Systems
Department of Urban Planning and Design
The University of Hong Kong

Member of Hong Kong Academy of Sciences

 

Prof Anthony G.O. Yeh is currently the Chan To Haan Professor in Urban Planning and Design and Chair Professor in Urban Planning and Geographic Information Systems of the Department of Urban Planning and Design and Director of the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Research Centre of The University of Hong Kong. His main areas of specialization are the applications of geographic information systems in urban and regional planning and smart cities and urban planning and development in Hong Kong, China, and SE Asia. He was elected as an Academician of The Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2003, Fellow of The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World in 2010, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in UK in 2013, and Member of the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences in 2019.  He was the recipient of the 2008 UN-HABITAT Lecture Award and 2012 Dr. Gill-Chin Lim Global Award presented in the 53rd Annual Conference of Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) held in Cincinnati, USA, 2012. He also received the Distinguished Research Achievement Award of HKU in 2016, the Life Time Achievement Award in GIS from the International Association of Chinese Professionals in Geographical Information Sciences (CPGIS) in 2017 and Gold Medal in the 46th Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions in 2018.




Topic: “Saving the Planet with Science and Technology”
Brief description: 
Human activities have tremendously transformed our planet, and the environmental changes we have brought about will have significant impacts on our livelihood, health and prosperity. As the Earth’s resources are dwindling and environment qualities deteriorating, it becomes more necessary than ever to monitor our environment and find solutions toward a sustainable future. In this talk, we will present and discuss how the latest scientific and technological development, with sustainability thinking at its core and with specific focus on data science and supercomputing, may help us do just that. How shall we integrate knowledge and skills from different disciplines, from physics to biology to the social sciences, to understand and even forecast something as complex as the Earth’s environment? How can we make use of the tremendous amount of data, supercomputers and artificial intelligence to address the most pressing issues of our time, such as climate change, environmental pollution, ecosystem collapse and food crisis? How shall we innovate and create new solutions for clean energy and sustainable development in urban cities and developing countries at large? We will explore these important questions for our future.
Date/time: 23/10/2021 15:00-16:00
Speaker:
Prof Amos P. K. TAI
Ph.D. (Harvard), B.Sc. (MIT)
Associate Professor
Earth System Science Programme
Faculty of Science
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Founding Member, The Hong Kong Young Academy of Hong Kong

Dr. Amos Tai is an Associate Professor in the Earth System Science Programme of the Faculty of Science at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Amos obtained his B.Sc. in Environmental Engineering Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering from Harvard University, and was a Croucher Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT before he joined CUHK in 2013. Amos specializes in atmospheric chemistry and physics, agricultural and forest meteorology, and biosphere-atmosphere interactions. His research combines high-performance Earth system modeling and multivariate statistical analysis of observations to examine the complex interactions between ecosystems and the atmosphere, addressing pressing issues such as the impacts of air pollution and climate change on ecosystems and food security, and how agriculture and forests can be better managed to mitigate environmental impacts. His work has been published in top-ranking journals in the atmospheric and environmental sciences including Nature Climate Change, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, and Environmental Research Letters.




Topic: “From invisibility cloaks to metalenses ”
Brief description: 
The advance of nanofabrication allows us to design nanostructures in building up metamaterials, which derive their optical properties from structures rather than constituent materials. These nanostructures, as a new form of materials, allow us to explore unimaginable applications from making objects invisible to integrating compact and multifunctional lenses to portable applications.
Date/time: 24/10/2021  / 10:00 - 11:00
Speaker: 
Prof Jensen LI
Professor
Department of Physics
School of Science
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Prof Jensen Li obtained his BEng degree with first class honours in electrical and electronic engineering from The University of Hong Kong in 1998 and his MPhil, PhD degree in physics from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2000 and 2004. From 2005 to 2007, Jensen worked in Imperial College London, with support from a Croucher Foundation postdoctoral fellowship. From 2007 to 2009, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at Berkeley. From 2009 to 2013, he was an assistant professor at the City University of Hong Kong. In 2013, he joined the University of Birmingham as a senior lecturer and became a reader in photonics. He joined the Department of Physics in HKUST in 2017.  Jensen is currently a professor in the Department of Physics at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research directions include nano-photonics and metamaterials, on topics including optical metasurfaces, non-Hermitian systems, transformation optics and acoustic metamaterials. He has been published more than a hundred peer-reviewed articles. His research group in Hong Kong and previously in UK has been supported by research grants from EU and Hong Kong RGC. Currently, he is leading a collaborative research project on “Non-Hermitian Systems in Optics and Acoustics” with several universities in Hong Kong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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