Lingnan University to host Honorary Doctorate Conferment Ceremony 2023 and Installation of President
Lingnan University will host “Honorary Doctorate Conferment Ceremony 2023 and Installation of President” on 2 November (Thursday) on campus. In assuming his new role as the President of Lingnan University on 1 July of this year, Prof S. Joe Qin aims to build on traditional strengths in liberal arts education, extend the university’s research and learning by furthering international networks, and ensure faculty and students are fully conversant with use of the latest digital tools.
The honorary doctorate recipients of this year are (from left) Prof Samuel C.C. Ting, Dr Mahesh Nagarajan, Mr Patrick Wong Chi-kwong, Dr Peter Wong Tung-shun, GBS, JP, and Prof David Bordwell.
Prof S. Joe Qin was admitted to Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University at an early age of 16 to study automation. He obtained his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees there before moving to the United States in 1989 to take up a full scholarship to pursue a PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he completed this qualification in 1992. He first worked as a principal engineer at Emerson Process Management before joining the academic world in 1995 as an Assistant Professor and then an endowed Professor in chemical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. From 2007 to 2019, Prof Qin was the Fluor Professor of Process Engineering at the Viterbi School of Engineering of the University of Southern California. During that period, he took three years’ leave to serve as Vice President and Presidential Chair Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.
Prof Qin found his roots in Hong Kong dated back to 2019 when he joined the City University of Hong Kong to serve as the inaugural Dean of the School of Data Science and Chair Professor of Data Science. Following the recommendation of its Search Committee, Lingnan University announced in October last year that Prof Qin would be appointed as the next President.
Over the years, Prof Qin has advised more than 40 PhD students. A prolific writer, Prof Qin has published more than more 470 international journal articles, book chapters, conference papers and presentations. He is an inventor who holds 12 US patents.
Prof Qin is a Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors, of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), among other honours.
Most recently, he received the 2022 CAST Computing in Chemical Engineering Award, presented by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the 2022 IEEE Control Systems Society Transition to Practice Award. In each case, he was the first and, so far, the only recipient of both awards to be working currently at a university in Hong Kong or Greater China.
In addition, Lingnan University will hold the Honorary Doctorate Conferment Ceremony on the same day. This year, Lingnan will confer honorary doctoral degrees upon five distinguished persons in recognition of their outstanding achievements in their respective professions and valuable contributions to the well-being of society. They are Prof Samuel C.C. Ting, Dr Mahesh Nagarajan, Mr Patrick Wong Chi-kwong, Dr Peter Wong Tung-shun, GBS, JP (in absentia), and Prof David Bordwell (in absentia).
Biographies of the honorary doctorate recipients:
Prof Samuel C.C. Ting
Prof Samuel C.C. Ting is a distinguished physicist and Nobel laureate who, over his career spanning several decades, has made groundbreaking contributions to the fields of particle physics and astrophysics. Prof Ting holds membership in prestigious scientific academies such as the US National Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and many others. He is the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Prof Ting has dedicated his life to unravelling the mysteries of the universe. Among the groundbreaking discoveries from Prof Ting include the antideuteron, the first heavy nuclei antimatter, and the J particle, a new form of matter. The latter has led to the award of the Nobel Prize. In subsequent years, Prof Ting proposed a precision physics detector to place on the International Space Station to study the origin and properties of cosmic rays, to search for the universe made out of antimatter and the origin of dark matter. To date, this experiment, known as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), has produced results which have fundamentally changed our understanding of the cosmos.
Throughout his career, Prof Ting has received numerous accolades and honours in recognition of his exceptional contributions to science. He holds honorary doctorates from the University of Michigan, Columbia University, University of Bologna, Moscow State University, and many others.
Prof Samuel C.C. Ting will be awarded Doctor of Science, honoris causa.
Dr Mahesh Nagarajan
Dr Mahesh Nagarajan is one of the top scientists in the world in the field of operations management and operations research. He obtained his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 1995, and his MA in Applied Mathematics and a PhD in Operations Management from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, US in 2003. He has been a Distinguished Scholar of the Faculty of Business at Lingnan University since 2019 and is currently a Research Fellow at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.
His research interests include applications of optimisation, mathematical modelling in cooperative game theory, stochastic inventory theory, and many more. He has published over 35 peer-reviewed articles in top-ranking journals. He actively contributes to the academic community including serving as Senior Editor for a number of journals.
His contribution to science and a safer world was probably most “meaningful” during the COVID-19 pandemic and he was recognised as one of the world’s most active researchers in the control of the COVID-19 pandemic. He plans to continue to support societal development by applying his research to other social needs. He wants to continue providing mentorship where he can, advise young scholars.
Dr Mahesh Nagarajan will be awarded Doctor of Business Administration, honoris causa.
Mr Patrick Wong Chi-kwong
Mr Patrick Wong Chi-kwong, a graduate from the Chinese Department of Lingnan College in 1984, is now a renowned figure in the legal profession in Hong Kong. He joined the prestigious law firm of Johnson Stokes & Master (now Mayer Brown) in 1990 and was promoted to partnership within just three years. He was appointed to various management and governance positions in Mayer Brown covering its corporate practices and later its global operations.
Mr Wong is also called upon to chair and serve on many professional, civic and public bodies, including serving for more than 10 years as the Chairman of the Company Law Committee of The Law Society of Hong Kong. He was also invited by the HKSAR Government to serve as a member of the Standing Committee on Company Law Reform of the Hong Kong SAR, and to chair the Advisory Group on directors and officers related provisions during the Company Ordinance Rewrite exercise of the HKSAR Government. Since retiring from active legal practice in 2015, he has served as the Deputy Chairman of the Hong Kong Productivity Council, and the Deputy Chairman of the Applied Research Council, to name but a few of his many endeavours.
Since 1991, Patrick has been a Director of Lingnan Education Organization, and has served on various governing bodies of Lingnan University, including the Board of Governors of Lingnan College, and the Court and Council of Lingnan University at different times. He was conferred an honorary fellowship by Lingnan University in 2011.
Mr Patrick Wong Chi-kwong will be awarded Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
Dr Peter Wong Tung-shun, GBS, JP
Dr Peter Wong Tung-shun is one of the most prominent banker in Hong Kong, and the only executive to have held the top post at three of the city’s largest international banks - Citigroup, Standard Chartered, and now HSBC. He is the only banker whose signature has appeared on banknotes issued by the latter two banks.
Over his 40-year career, Dr Wong repeatedly managed to find opportunities in volatile situations. He has also played a critical role helping to explain China to the West.
Dr Wong remains active in numerous government bodies and industry associations. Among those which he has chaired or served include: the Board of The Community Chest of Hong Kong, HSBC’s The Hongkong Bank Foundation, the Hong Kong Association of Banks, The Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce; The Hong Kong Institute of Bankers, and many more. He is also a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
Dr Wong was awarded a Gold Bauhinia Star by the HKSAR Government in 2020. He is passionate about nurturing the youth of today so that they can contribute holistically to the excellence of Hong Kong and weather times of economic stress like today. Seeing young people as catalysts of change, he continues to mentor university students and young colleagues at work. This is all harmonised with Lingnan’s mission.
Dr Peter Wong Tung-shun will be awarded Doctor of Business Administration, honoris causa.
Prof David Bordwell
Prof David Bordwell is the leading name in film scholarship today. He is Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published over 20 groundbreaking books and more than 100 articles and book chapters on film history, film theory, and criticism. He is writing still, having published his latest, Perplexing Plots: Popular Storytelling and the Poetics of Murder for Columbia University Press, in 2023.
Prof Bordwell is an authority on Hong Kong and Japanese cinema. His work on American cinema best exemplifies his approach to film art. It stretches across the whole span of motion pictures, from precinema to silent pictures and classic studio movies to contemporary Hollywood films. Prof Bordwell does not just cover films, directors, and production companies but the conditions needed to make, circulate, and understand movies.
Prof David Bordwell’s research is world leading; as teacher he has won a University Distinguished Teaching Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, in 1991, and an Anthology Film Archive Award for Film Preservation in 2006. He was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Copenhagen in 1997. In Hong Kong, a place he considers as second home, he received the Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fund Visiting Professorship at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in 2001; and the Asian Film Award for Excellence in Scholarship in Asian Cinema in 2007.
Prof David Bordwell will be awarded Doctor of Humanities, honoris causa.