HKU Public Lecture by Mok Hing Yiu Distinguished Visiting Professor: Food Security in the Face of Climate Change: The Next Green Revolution
- Date & Time
- June 12, 2025 (Thursday) | 4:15 pm (HKT)
- Venue
- LE1, Library Extension Building, Main Campus, HKU
- Speaker
- Professor Sheng LUAN
Chancellor’s Professor at the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the UC Berkeley; Mok Hing Yiu Distinguished Visiting Professor at HKU
Greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural activities are a major driver of climate change, which, in turn, undermines crop production and threatens global food security. Plant biology research offers a promising solution to break this vicious cycle by developing more resilient crops and reducing agriculture-related emissions.
In this context, Professor Sheng Luan will present a case study on the environmental damage caused by the excessive use of chemical fertiliser in farming — and how his research in plant biology could pave the way for a sustainable "New Green Revolution".
Speaker Professor Sheng LUAN
Chancellor’s Professor at the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the UC Berkeley; Mok Hing Yiu Distinguished Visiting Professor at HKU
Professor Sheng Luan received his PhD from the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology and postdoctoral training in the Department of Chemistry at Harvard. He took a faculty position in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, as an Assistant Professor in 1994 and is now an Endowed Chair Professor (Chancellor’s Professor). His work focuses on calcium signalling mechanisms in plants and has received several notable honours, including AAAS Fellow, ASPB Fellow, Humboldt Research Award, and Charles Albert Shull Award (ASPB). He was a Web of Science “Highly Cited Researcher” from 2014 to 2024. For community service, he served as the Associate Chair and Chair of his department from 2018 to 2024 and was the founding Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Plant, a leading journal in the field of plant sciences.
