Convocation Newsletter, Summer 2018

O n the first day in his new post as President and Vice-Chancellor of The University of Hong Kong, Professor Xiang Zhang took time out to visit Ricci Hall to trace his ties with the University. Leafing through a yearbook at the Ricci archive, Professor Zhang was gratified to find a picture of his mentor, Professor Andrew Ching Tam 譚正 (BSc 1967; BSc(Sp) 1968; MSc 1970), an HKU alumnus and Riccian. He recalled how he was inspired by the late IBM research scientist, who served as one of his two thesis supervisors when the young Zhang was pursuing a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. “My career took off because of him. I benefitted immensely from his mentorship,” Professor Zhang said. “Andrew’s inventiveness shaped much of my work today.” A world-renowned researcher and an expert in optics and nanotechnology, Professor Zhang took the helm at HKU on July 17, 2018. Prior to joining HKU, he served as the Ernest S. Kuh Endowed Chair Professor and Director of the Nano-scale Science and Engineering Center at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his breakthrough research on “the invisibility cloak”, which was named in TIME Magazine’s “Top Ten Scientific Discoveries of the Year” in 2008. TIME wrote that Berkeley scientists “proved that they could wrap an object in the material and bend light waves around it, making it effectively invisible”.