CUHK Professor Dennis Lo Elected as Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Professor Dennis Lo Yuk-Ming from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)’s Faculty of Medicine has been elected as a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in recognition of his success and contribution in life sciences and medical research. The CAS elected 59 new members this year, with Professor Lo being the only one from Hong Kong.
Known as the “father of non-invasive prenatal testing”, Professor Lo is the Director of the Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences, Associate Dean (Research) and Chairman of the Department of Chemical Pathology of CU Medicine. Professor Lo and his colleagues have been instrumental in making non-invasive DNA-based prenatal testing a clinical reality. The non-invasive prenatal test they developed for Down syndrome is regarded as a significant breakthrough by the global scientific community, and has been widely adopted in dozens of countries. Professor Lo has developed genome-wide genetic and epigenetic approaches that lay the foundation for early detection of multiple types of cancer. He and his team have successfully developed technologies that allow for their detection.
CAS members are elected by all current CAS members who have voting rights. The elected individuals are required to have made systematic and creative achievements as well as significant contributions in the field of science and technology. The CAS elects new members every two years. Together with Professor Lo, CUHK has a total of eight CAS members among its faculty members, including Professor Xie Zuowei, Professor Henry Wong Nai-ching, Professor Wu Chi and Professor Thomas Mak Chung-wai.
CUHK Professor Siew Ng as the First Clinician-Scientist in Hong Kong to Be a New Cornerstone Investigator
Professor Siew Ng from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)’s Faculty of Medicine (CU Medicine) was selected as a 2023 New Cornerstone Investigator under The New Cornerstone Investigator Programme, which is a non-profit and independent fund initiated by Tencent. She is the first and only Hong Kong scholar in the field of Biology and Biomedical Sciences to receive the honour since the launch of the programme. Professor Ng will be awarded an initial five-year term grant with an annual budget of 5 million RMB for experimental research.
The New Cornerstone Investigator Programme is one of the largest independent, nonprofit funding initiatives in mainland China. Based on the principle of “supporting people, not projects”, the programme aims to provide stable long-term support for a select group of exceptional scientists to carry out basic research, and take the leap “from 0 to 1”.Approximately 600 outstanding scientists applied this year. After several rounds of rigorous evaluation by national and international experts, they chose 46 scientists from 13 Chinese cities in the fields of Mathematics & Physical Sciences and Biological & Biomedical Sciences to receive New Cornerstone Investigator Programme funding.