Town Hall meeting
The University will be holding a Town Hall Meeting on 8 December to update faculty and staff on the progress of the Performance-based Pay Review Scheme and other recent University developments.

Distinguished lecture
Professor Robert Bellah, Elliott Professor of Sociology Emeritus, University of California at Berkeley, will deliver a City University Distinguished Lecture on 12 December at the Connie Fan Multi-media Conference Room. The title of his talk is "Can We Imagine a Global Civil Religion?" One of the most influential sociologists working today, Professor Bellah has published widely on religious and moral issues and their connection to society. His most recent book is Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age.

Nobel literary evening
The Department of English and the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics are organising an evening in honour of the Swedish writer Mr Tomas Tranströmer, the 2011 Nobel Laureate in Literature, on 12 December. Mr Tranströmer is Sweden's most renowned contemporary poet. His poetry has been translated into some 60 languages, and he has gained a following among many readers around the world, not least among other poets. The distinguished Chinese poet Mr Bei Dao will read his own translations of Mr Tranströmer's works, as well as sharing personal impressions of the poet and his writings. The Reverend Lennart Hamark from the Church of Sweden in China and Hong Kong will read some of Mr Tranströmer's poetry in the original Swedish. The Swedish Consul-General in Hong Kong, Mr Jörgen Halldin, will talk about the significance of the Nobel Prize on the world academic and cultural stage. Professor Torbjörn Lodén from Stockholm University will discuss the importance of Mr Tranströmer and his contribution to poetry. Professor Kingsley Bolton, Acting Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and Chair Professor of English at CityU, will read English translations of the poet's work. 

Interdisciplinary competition
The cultural literacy competition encourages undergraduate students from different disciplines to learn about both Chinese and Western cultures in areas such as history, philosophy, literature and science. The winner of the HK$5,000 first prize of the inaugural competition was Sun Yang, a Year 3 student from the Department of Economics and Finance. The competition was organised by the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics.

Exhibitions
More than 30 paintings by the local painter Mr Dai Kai-chee are currently on display at the Run Run Shaw Library. The exhibition is part of a series of out-of-classroom activities designed for a resource-based learning approach. The activities use multimedia broadcasting, thematic book displays and painting workshops to introduce students to art appreciation. The exhibition runs until 15 December.

In addition, an exhibition titled "Dancing in Water: Jane Liu's Imagery in Art" organised by the Chinese Civilisation Centre will be held at CityU Gallery until 15 January.

Kudos
Professor Edward Yung Kai-ning, Chair Professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering, has been elected Fellow of IEEE 2012 for his outstanding contributions to engineering education and research in applied electromagnetics. The department now boasts 13 IEEE Fellows on faculty.

CityU won five Excellent Product Awards at the 13th China Hi-Tech Fair, the largest and most influential exhibition on science and technology in China, on 16–21 November 2011. The award-winning projects are: the mangrove wetland for sewage treatment project and the study of the energy utilisation of the alien and native mangrove species by Professor Nora Tam Fung-yee, Chair Professor of Department of Biology and Chemistry and Director of the Futian-CityU Mangrove Research & Development Centre; the low cost polymer nano-composite solar modules and the flexible organic RFID tags and smart sensors for food safety by Dr A L Roy Vellaisamy, Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Materials Science; and the 3G real-time video surveillance cloud service system by Professor Jia Weijia, Professor of the Department of Computer Science and Director of the Future Networking Centre.

CityU architectural students dominated the public art category of the "China building" — 2011 National Environmental Arts Design Competition in Nanjing in October. Three of the eight CityU teams competing in the competition came home with prizes. "Floating light", designed by Wu Un-kei, Tsang Wai-ching and Lee Kui-yuen, won the third prize; "Raising of sails", designed by Lee Yuk-ting, Fong Yick-wah and Ng Ka-long, won the third prize, too; and "Back flowing", designed by Cheung Chin-tung, Pang Kwan-shing and Wu Sze-man, won the merit award. The award winning-students are all from the Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies programme and were supervised by Dr Charlie Xue Qiuli, Assistant Professor, and Mr John Cheng Chiu-fong, Lecturer, both of the Division of Building Science and Technology (BST). The design brief was issued by Dr Joseph Wong, Assistant Professor in BST. The competition is divided into four categories: landscape, public arts, interior design, and building. Each category has both professional and student groups.

Liu Fang, a PhD student in the Department of Electronic Engineering (EE), under the supervision of Dr Cheng Lee-ming, Associate Professor in EE, won the Best Student Award of the 10th International Workshop on Digital-forensics and Watermarking with her paper "Perceptual image hashing via wave atom transform".