Award for Teaching Excellence 2013-14

Dr Eddy K F Lam
Department of Statistics & Actuarial Science

Dr Lam received the Faculty of Science Award for Teaching Excellence 2013-14, for her outstanding teaching performance and the continuous efforts he has put in arousing students’ learning interests.

Teaching is a mission that is complex and difficult. Good teachers can never declare "Mission Accomplished” because university education is not an endpoint, but a bridge to the students’ new lives. Good teachers’ involvement begins at the classroom door but will not end there.

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” — Henry Adams.

Dr Lam received his undergraduate and master degrees in Statistics from New Brunswick, Canada. He joined HKU in 1988 as a Teaching Assistant, then moved on to obtain his PhD in Statistics from The University of Hong Kong and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics & Actuarial Science. One major research activity of Dr Lam is on Medical Statistics or Biostatistics. He has established a good rapport with some researchers at the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Dentistry. His role is to provide statistical advice in the planning, design and data analysis of some controlled clinical trials and/or questionnaire designs; while his goal is to advocate and promote the appropriate and efficient use of statistical methods so that the medical research can be conducted at the highest scientific standard, and to provide valid and timely answers to issues affecting health of the general public.

Dr Lam is a committed teacher. He regards teaching as an activity that heavily involves communications between teacher and students and that “teaching” is a two-way process. Teacher imparts knowledge to the students, but can also benefit from spending quality time sharing with the students so as to have a good understanding of their needs. His interactions with the students have always been pleasant and he treats them as friends rather than students. He tries to teach the students to learn how to learn, and that his job is not to teach them how to do something, but to equip them with logical, independent thinking and critical mind to comprehend the rationale and ask WHY.