Leading the Charge:
Meet Our New Chair Professors Appointed
Professor Guanhua CHEN
Chair of Theoretical Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry
Professor Chen (BSc, Fudan; PhD, Caltech) has been with Department of Chemistry since 1996, and was the Head of Department from 2010 to 2016, and is now the Managing Director of Hong Kong Quantum AI Lab, an AIR@InnoHK Centre.
Professor Chen’s research focuses on (1) the application of machine learning in computational chemistry, and (2) the development of first-principles quantum mechanical method to simulate electronic, optoelectronic and electrochemical devices. Employing the integrated platform of machine learning, quantum simulation and experimental calibration, Professor Chen’s lab is currently interested in solving the realistic challenges in renewable energy industry.
Professor Chen is an elected Fellow of American Physical Society (2014-), a Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (2011-), and received the Croucher Foundation Senior Research Fellowship in 2016.
Professor Xiaodong CUI
Chair of Condensed Matter Physics in the Department of Physics
Professor Cui holds the position of Associate Head at the Department of Physics and has served as a Council Member for the Physics Society of Hong Kong since 2005. Before joining the Faculty of Science in 2004, Professor Cui was a joint postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University and IBM.
His work centres around the investigation of the physical properties of 2D semiconductors, with a specific emphasis on exploring the optical properties of 2D transition metal dichalcogenides. Notably, he leads an internationally recognised team that conducts cutting-edge research in the field of Valleytronics, a groundbreaking research area leveraging the concept of 'valleys' to impart electrons with a novel degree of freedom under controlled conditions.
Cui is a 2017 recipient of the Croucher Foundation Senior Research Fellowship and he received the Outstanding Researcher Award in 2017 and the Research Output Prize in 2015 from HKU.
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NEWLY APPOINTED
Professor Hongjie DAI
Chair Professor in the Department of Chemistry
Professor Dai holds a joint appointment in the Department of Chemistry, the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and the School of Biomedical Sciences. Prior to joining HKU, Professor Dai had a tenure of over 15 years at Stanford University, where he is the J G Jackson and C J Wood Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus.
His highly interdisciplinary research spanning multiple disciplines including chemistry, physics, materials science, and medicine. He is a pioneering figure in the fields of carbon nanotube and nano-graphene based drug delivery and photothermal therapy, and he has contributed significantly to the development of in vivo near-infrared II/ short-wave infrared biological imaging.
Dai has been named Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate for 10 years from 2014 to 2023 in 3 different fields. In addition, he is a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, USA, and the National Academy of Sciences, USA, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Professor Zheng Xiao GUO
Chair of Chemistry and Materials Science in the Department of Chemistry
Professor Guo is a joint-faculty Professor of Chemistry and Mechanical Engineering. He is an Honorary Professor at University College London, where he was Professor of Chemistry and Pro-(Vice) Provost and China Ambassador before joining HKU.
Focused on the synthesis and simulations of highly functional atomic clusters, nanostructures, and materials, Guo’s group combines fundamental design principles with ab initio, molecular dynamics, cellular automata, and finite element simulations and machine learning for materials discovery and device innovation. He has contributed around 300 high-quality journal publications and over 300 conference papers/presentations.
He was the first Chinese recipient of the Sir Beilby Medal & Prize in 2000, and is an elected Member of the Academia Europaea, a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, where he served as a Member of the RSC Publishing Board and Science Sub-Board from 2015 to 2018.
NEWLY APPOINTED
Professor Xuhua HE
Chair of Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics
Before joining HKU in 2023, Professor He was Choh-Ming Li Professor of Mathematics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Professor at the University of Maryland.
He investigates arithmetic geometry, algebraic groups, and representation theory, with a focus on finite and affine Weyl groups, flag varieties, and their applications.
He is a New Cornerstone Investigator and a recipient of the Xplorer Prize, and the Chevalley Prize in Lie Theory from the American Mathematical Society in 2022 and the Morningside Gold Medal of Mathematics from the International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians in 2013. He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2018.
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NEWLY APPOINTED
Professor Dong LI
Chair of Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics
Before joining HKU in 2023, Professor Li was affiliated with the University of British Columbia (UBC), the SUSTech International Center for Mathematics at the Southern University of Science and Technology, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
His research primarily centres around nonlinear partial differential equations, specifically the fundamental aspects and long-time asymptotic behaviour of solutions. His work also probes the application of mathematics in the sciences, such as fluid dynamics, biology, and physics.
Li was a von Neumann Fellow at the School of Mathematics of the Institute of Advanced Study from 2012 to 2013. He received the Charles A. McDowell Award at UBC for his outstanding achievements in pure or applied scientific research as a young faculty member, and was honoured with the Coxeter-James Prize by the Canadian Mathematical Society in 2015. Li has been a founding member of the Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences since 2019.
NEWLY APPOINTED
Professor Sir Fraser STODDART
Chair of Contemporary Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry
A distinguished chemist and Nobel Laureate, Professor Stoddart was a Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University for 16 years before joining HKU in 2023. He is also the Dean of the Stoddart Institute of Molecular Science at Zhejiang University and a Visiting Professor of Chemistry at both Northwestern University and the University of New South Wales.
Stoddart's groundbreaking research has transformed the understanding of chemical bonding by introducing the concept of the mechanical bond. He is currently working on the fabrication of molecular pumps and electric molecular motors, and his research spans the fields of chemistry, materials science, and molecular nanotechnology.
In addition to the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, he is a recipient of the Centenary Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry and the 2007 King Faisal International Prize in Science. He has been named Highly Cited Researcher for 11 consecutive years, and is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, the Royal Society of London, UK, and a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Professor Alice Sze Tsai WONG
Chair of Cancer Biology in the School of Biological Sciences
Professor Wong is the Associate Vice-President of Research, Director (Interim) of the School of Biological Sciences, and Director (Interim) of the Dr Li Dak-Sum Research Centre, HKU-Karolinska Institutet Collaboration in Regenerative Medicine.
She is internationally recognised of her expertise in signal transduction in cancer. In particular, cell adhesion molecules in various physiological processes, and their contribution to cancer when dysregulated. She has made numerous seminal contributions to this research and its translational applications with innovation and technology awards. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. She is also the recipient of numerous prestigious awards for research excellence, including the Women in Cancer Research – Brigid G Leventhal Scholar Award, the AACR-Bristol-Myer Squibb Oncology Young Investigator Scholar Award, the Croucher Senior Research Fellowship, and the RGC Senior Research Fellowship.
In addition to her remarkable research achievements, Professor Wong also has a significant contribution to teaching and learning, as recognised through the Senior Fellowship by the Higher Education Academy.
Professor Wenan ZANG
Chair of Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics
Professor Zang is a leading expert in combinatorial optimisation, integer programming, algorithm design, and graph theory. He has successfully resolved several prominent long-standing open problems in these research fields, and has significantly advanced the theory of polyhedral combinatorics, which plays a central role in operations research and theoretical computer science. Moreover, he has discovered some powerful and novel combinatorial methods that can be used to tackle various important optimisation problems.
Professor Zang is a recipient of the Hao Wang Prize and the Overseas Outstanding Young Scholar Award. One of his papers was selected as an Outstanding Research Achievement by the Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and another one was included in the very first volume of Discrete Mathematics – Editor’s Choice. He is currently an editorial board member for both Discrete Applied Mathematics and Journal of Combinatorial Optimization. He also served as an associate editor for Operations Research, a flagship international journal in this subject.
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