Congregation 2014
More than 10,000 awards ranging from PhDs to associate degrees will be conferred on CityU students at the 2014 Congregation from 11 to 19 November for the University and on 20 November for the Community College of City University. In addition, three distinguished persons will receive honorary doctoral degrees on 11 November in recognition of their significant contributions to education and the well-being of society. The ceremony on 11 November will be held at the Wong Cheung Lo Hui Yuet Hall and other sessions at the Chan Tai Ho Multi-purpose Hall.

Professor David D Ho, the founding Scientific Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, and the Irene Diamond Professor at The Rockefeller University, will receive an Honorary Doctor of Science. Mr Raymond Or Ching-fai, Chairman and Chief Executive of China Strategic Holdings Limited, will receive an Honorary Doctor of Social Science. Mr Yu Kwok-chun, Chairman of the Yue Hwa Group and Chairman of Yue Hwa Chinese Products Emporium Limited, will receive an Honorary Doctor of Business Administration.

Excellence in research award
This year’s awardees of the CityU Outstanding Research Award are Professor Felipe Cucker of the Department of Mathematics and Professor Sun Dong of the Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering. The two scholars were unanimously chosen by a selection panel following a rigorous selection exercise. The Awards will be formally presented to the winners at the Congregation 2014.

APAC Innovation Summit
Several CityU faculty members including Professor Way Kuo, University President, will speak at the APAC Innovation Summit to be held at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre from 1 to 6 December. The Summit aims to create a landmark forum where leading minds and influencers from Asia Pacific nations can converge to mutually inspire through new thinking models and engage in forward-thinking dialogue on policy implementation and market adaption with uniquely Asian characteristics.

City University Distinguished Lectures
Professor Loren W Crabtree, Emeritus Chancellor and Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, US, will give a talk titled “Echoes of 1914: Does History Rhyme?” which assesses similarities between 1914 and World War One and 2014, including the resurgence of feverish nationalism; disputes over seemingly insignificant places such as the Diaoyu (Senkaku) islands; ethnic and religious conflict within nations and regions; and an intensifying arms race, especially naval competition between the US and China. The talk will take place on 5 November.

In addition, Professor David D Ho, a recipient of CityU’s Honorary Doctor of Science (see above), will give a talk titled “Novel Approaches to HIV Prevention” on 12 November in which he will discuss alternative strategies such as the use of antibodies as agents for passive administration to prevent HIV infection. 

France-Hong Kong Distinguished Lecture      
The topic of the next France–Hong Kong Distinguished Lecture will be Mean Field Games, referring to mathematical models that describe the behaviour of very large numbers of agents who modify their decisions based on their interactions with other agents. The speaker will be Professor Pierre-Louis Lions of the Collège de France and the talk will take place on 10 November.

New appointment
Dr Louis Ma has been appointed as the new Director of the School of Continuing and Professional Education with effect from 1 November 2014.

City Cultural Salon
Lam Tian Xing, a renowned contemporary artist, will give a talk titled “A painter’s life: reflections on my painting career” at the City Cultural Salon on 14 November. Lam is the Chairman of the Hong Kong International Art Association, a member of the China Artists’ Association, and a member of the Founding Committee of the Chinese Painting Institute.

Humanity Talk Series
Mr Anthony Wong Yiu-ming, a prominent artist, and Dr Petula Ho Sik-ying from the University of Hong Kong will deliver a talk titled “Restless love in Hong Kong” on 14 November. This is the second talk in a special series for students delivered by popular writers/artists in celebration of CityU’s 30th anniversary this year.

Kudos
Dr Li Minming, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, in collaboration with other researchers abroad, received the Best Paper Award for “TSP: Thermal Safe Power — Efficient power budgeting for Many-Core Systems in Dark Silicon” at the International Conference on Hardware/Software Codesign and System Synthesis from 12 to 17 October 2014 in New Delhi, India. The paper proposes that TSP (Thermal Safe Power) provides safe power constraint values as a function of the number of simultaneously operating cores.