KT Awards Recipients of Year 2015/16

The Innovationem Award (renamed as HKBU Innovation Award)

Awardee: Prof. YUNG Kin Lam

Department of Biology

Project:

“Personalised Neural Stem Cell Technology for Treating Patients with Incurable Diseases”

Prof. Yung’s team used adult neural stem cells to develop and differentiate into neurons and avoid ethical and genetic problems. Noteworthy, the present invention can be licensed to hospitals around the globe for conducting the autologous cell replacement therapy. Moreover, it can cure the diseases, thereby reducing the economic burden due to the huge medical costs as well as the indirect costs related to the social and family issues. 

Led by Prof. Yung, his technology start-up company was established in November 2014, successively received three years of TSSSU grants that were supported by Innovation and Technology Fund and licensed the said technologies from HKBU. This start-up aims to build up a larger portfolio of relevant technologies, extend their researches to other co-operators and bringing them to the public via clinical applications.

In summary, based on four criteria including contribution, impact, innovation and reputation, Prof. Yung got the highest scores on his innovation entitled “Personalised Neural Stem Cell Technology for Treating Patients with Incurable Diseases” and was awarded the honour of HKBU Innovationem Award in 2016.  

The Knowledge Transfer Award  (renamed as HKBU Knowledge Transfer Award)

Awardee: Prof. Kara CHAN Ka-wah

Department of Communication Studies

Project:

“Project for supporting ‘Independent Enquiry Study’ among secondary school students”

This is a case in which a scholar makes a contribution to the secondary school community. 

The Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) curriculum requires students to conduct Independent Enquiry Study (IES) projects, which are very often social science research projects on a small scale. Students are, however, limited by the methodologies at their command. Underpinned by Prof. Kara Chan’s extensive research expertise in advertising, gender roles, the environment and health, this project is the first of its kind to introduce to students various social science research methodologies, which even their teachers may know nothing of.

The project supports students and teachers of the external partner by developing teaching videos and other materials that introduce to them four social science research methodologies: focus group interviews, content analysis, sample survey and the visual method. The website of the project hosts the videos, their transcripts, easy to understand examples based on original research papers, the original research papers themselves and examples of research materials such as questionnaires. A resource pack in the form of a 104-page book was published and disseminated to the secondary school community and public libraries.

The project has attracted wide attention from the secondary education sector and the general public. Its extensive coverage in newspapers and on radio has further extended its impacts.