Biographical sketches of key figures

These are in-depth biographical sketches of four notable individuals associated with CityU: two former Vice-Chancellors who have since left office (Chang Hsin-kang and Way Kuo), one representative recruited scholar (Hua Zhang), and one representative alumnus (Wong Chun). Each sketch focuses on life trajectory and the person's role at CityU; for pure lists of honours and titles, see ./academicians-and-awards.md; for a comparative look at their academic contributions, see ./faculty-and-leaders.md.

Stylistic note: All four individuals covered here are former Vice-Chancellors who have already left office, or individuals who are not part of the current leadership. They sit in a neutral factual zone and are named according to the record. CityU's current and recent senior leadership (the Acting President, the immediately preceding President who recently resigned, the Chairman of the Council) are not included here; their personal histories appear under the relevant office-holder entries in the governance/wild-history module.

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Four biographical sketches, two starkly different life trajectories. Both Vice-Chancellors came from engineering backgrounds, yet after retiring or stepping down they headed in unexpected directions—one delving into the history of cultural exchange between China and the West, the other writing critical commentaries on higher education. A materials scientist recruited from Nanyang Technological University took the concept of "phase engineering" all the way to having an international conference named after it. And a graduate of the School of Creative Media made a low-budget film about bipolar disorder that won the Golden Horse Award for Best New Director. In their different ways, these four people reflect the multiple paths through which this young university has built its reputation on the strength of its people.

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# Chang Hsin-kang — the "scholar-president" who moved from biomedical engineering to cultural general education

# Early life and academic beginnings

Chang Hsin-kang (張信剛) was born in Shenyang, Liaoning in 1940^※ and educated in Taiwan, graduating from National Taiwan University's Department of Civil Engineering in 1962^※, after which he went to the United States for further study: a master's degree in structural engineering from Stanford University in 1964, and a PhD in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University in 1969^※. He belongs to the generation of Chinese scholars who went to the US after the war and got their start in the then-emerging interdisciplinary field of biomedical engineering. His research spans the mechanics and modelling of physiological systems, and he has published over a hundred scholarly papers in English^※.

# An academic-administrative career spanning the US and Hong Kong

Before becoming Vice-Chancellor of CityU, Chang was already an experienced manager of engineering education: from 1985 to 1990 he served as Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC)^※; he came to Hong Kong in 1990 to become the Founding Dean of the School of Engineering at the newly established Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)^※—helping lay the foundations of the engineering school at that fledgling institution; he subsequently returned to the US to serve as Dean of the School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh^※; and in 1996 he took up the post of President and University Chair Professor at City University of Hong Kong, a position he held until his retirement in 2007^※.

# Role at CityU

Chang was one of CityU's longest-serving early Vice-Chancellors after it attained university status in 1994 (he was in post for 11 years^※). A distinctive feature of his tenure was his emphasis on general education and culture: from 2000 to 2003 he chaired the Hong Kong SAR Government's Culture and Heritage Commission^※; in 2002 he was awarded the Gold Bauhinia Star (GBS) by the HKSAR Government for his contributions to education, culture, and technology^※; and in 2000 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng)^※.

# A "second life" after retirement: civilisational dialogue between China and the West, and humanistic general education

What sets Chang apart is his post-retirement pivot towards humanistic general education and civilisational exchange: after stepping down in 2007, he taught humanities and general-education courses at Tsinghua University, Peking University, Shandong University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Turkey's Boğaziçi University^※, while also holding honorary professorships at Peking, Tsinghua, Northeastern, Xi'an Jiaotong, and other universities; and he has published twelve books in Chinese and English^※, spanning science and technology, history, culture, and civilisational exchange.

According to his English-language academic profile, alongside his biomedical engineering output he published eleven books in Chinese focused on education, culture, and civilisations, reflecting a scholarly interest in civilisational and cultural exchange across the Eurasian landmass, with the Silk Road routes as its centre of gravity^※. This orientation towards dialogue between Chinese and Western civilisations crystallised in works such as 《絲路文明十五講》(Fifteen Lectures on Silk Road Civilisations, Peking University Press, 2018)^※, giving him, beyond the identity of an engineering-trained university president, a second identity as a "lecturer on the history of civilisations."

Touching on higher-education governance in an interview with Time Weekly on 23 November 2010^※, he observed: "「中國大陸不應該再讓大學的運作以官本位的思想折射出來：哪個校長是正局級，哪個校長是副廳級」 (Universities in mainland China should not allow their operations to be refracted through an official-rank mentality—which president is at bureau-director level, which president is at deputy-bureau level)." He argued that university governance should revolve around academic values rather than administrative hierarchy, holding up Hong Kong's vice-chancellors as a point of contrast for being largely free from bureaucratic interference. "Trained as a scientist, yet building a second life around the dialogue of civilisations"—that is the tag that distinguishes Chang Hsin-kang from the typical engineering-university chief.

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# Way Kuo — master of reliability engineering and author on higher education

# Academic background and contributions to reliability engineering

Way Kuo (郭位) was born in Taipei in 1951^※. He earned a bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan in 1972^※ and a PhD in engineering from Kansas State University in 1980^※. His career has included a stint at Bell Labs, a professorship at Texas A&M University, and service as Dean of the College of Engineering and Distinguished Professor at the University of Tennessee^※.

The core of his academic genealogy is reliability design for electronic systems, with a particular specialism in reliability modelling for systems at the "infant stage." According to his CityU Scholars profile, he has been described as "a pioneer in reliability research of systems at their infant stage"^※, and his main research thrusts are system reliability engineering, the mathematics of ageing and burn-in, and reliability optimisation design. The most authoritative endorsement of this body of work is his election in 2000 to the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE), with the citation: "For contributions to reliability design for microelectronics products and systems"^※. His work on a unified "burn-in—yield—reliability" framework for microelectronics was collected in the monograph Reliability, Yield, and Stress Burn-In (Kluwer/Springer)^※, which is regarded as a classic in the field.

Note: Some non-scholarly biographical sources further claim he has received an "IEEE Lifetime Achievement Award in Reliability and is the first Chinese recipient of this honour in nearly fifty years." This archive has not been able to locate independent official or primary-source corroboration of that specific award or of the "first Chinese" designation, and so these claims are not adopted as fact. Only the verifiable NAE citation and the CityU Scholars profile are used here to present his reliability-engineering pedigree.

# Fellowships and honours

Way Kuo is a rare example of a multi-academy fellow: a member of the US National Academy of Engineering (2000)^※; an Academician of Taiwan's Academia Sinica; a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering; a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Engineering; and a Fellow of IEEE, INFORMS, the American Society for Quality, the American Statistical Association, and several other learned societies.

# His role at CityU and his educational philosophy

Way Kuo took office as CityU's fourth Vice-Chancellor in May 2008 and stepped down in May 2023^※. During his tenure, he championed an institutional philosophy of "integration of teaching and research; separation of education and politics"^※; upon his departure the University Council conferred on him the title "President Emeritus and University Distinguished Professor"^※. It was under his leadership that CityU broke into the global top 100 in several world rankings and established new structures such as the Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences, Hong Kong's only veterinary school (covered in detail in the colleges and research modules). A full biographical sketch covering his fifteen years of scholarly and administrative work at the helm is set out in a separate entry: ./fourth-president-reliability-scholar.md.

Way Kuo is also an active author on higher education: he published The Heart of the Matter: A University President's Reflections on Education, which sets out his philosophy across four dimensions—internationalisation of higher education, the integration of teaching and research, quality and evaluation, and creativity and innovation^※—arguing for equal emphasis on teaching and research, university-industry partnerships, and merit-based talent policies. He has also written public-commentary works on energy and nuclear issues, bringing his professional lens of reliability engineering to bear on energy-policy debates.

Archival note: Intra-university tensions and specific controversies that arose during Way Kuo's tenure are classified under the governance/wild-history module; this sketch records only the neutral dimension of his academic and educational philosophy.

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# Hua Zhang — a pioneer in the "phase engineering" of nanomaterials

# Academic journey

Hua Zhang (張華) represents the cohort of senior materials scientists that CityU recruited from overseas over the past decade or so. He earned his BSc and MSc at Nanjing University and his PhD under Prof. Liu Zhongfan at Peking University^※. He subsequently rose rapidly in the field of materials chemistry, teaching for many years at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore before joining CityU, where he is now the Herman Hu Chair Professor of Nanomaterials and a Chair Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science.

# Academic contribution: Phase Engineering of Nanomaterials (PEN)

Zhang's signature original contribution is the proposal and systematic development of the concept of "Phase Engineering of Nanomaterials" (PEN)—tuning the crystal phase of nanomaterials (including unconventional crystal phases and amorphous structures) to open up new avenues for applications in catalysis, clean energy, optoelectronics, sensing, water treatment, and beyond. He has made foundational contributions to the synthesis of ultrathin two-dimensional nanomaterials and of metal nanomaterials with unconventional crystal phases. The full technical detail of this research programme—from the first synthesis of gold nanosheets with an hcp phase using a graphene oxide template, to the institutionalisation of PEN in the form of a 2024 Nature Conference—is set out in a dedicated entry: 04-research/hua-zhang-2d-nanomaterials-phase.md.

# Academic impact

Hua Zhang is a core member of CityU's Highly Cited Researchers cohort: he has published over 550 papers, with more than 100,000 citations and an h-index exceeding 160^※; since 2014/2015 he has been listed year after year as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in two fields (Materials Science and Chemistry); and he has been elected a Foreign Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences^※ and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. His case exemplifies CityU's development path of "building flagship strength in materials science and rapidly establishing international visibility by recruiting senior Highly Cited Researchers."

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# Wong Chun — a Golden Horse Best New Director from the School of Creative Media

# Training in CityU's School of Creative Media

Wong Chun (黃進) is one of the most prominent film-alumni of CityU's School of Creative Media (SCM). He graduated from SCM in 2011, majoring in Film Art^※. Founded in 1998, SCM is one of the few schools in Hong Kong that educates students across film, new-media art, and digital creation simultaneously; Wong's trajectory is a footnote to the School's pedagogical path. Details of the School's subject setup, research directions, and its architectural flagship, the Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, are in 04-research/creative-media-and-data-research.md.

# Mad World and multiple major awards

Wong Chun's debut feature, @Mad World (2016), focuses on a bipolar-disorder sufferer, his family, and Hong Kong's mental health and housing struggles. It had its world premiere at the 41st Toronto International Film Festival^※, and subsequently swept major Chinese-language film awards: Best New Director at the 53rd Golden Horse Awards^※, Best New Director at the 36th Hong Kong Film Awards, and Best Director at the 23rd Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards. Made on a very low budget, this film is now regarded as one of the representative works of Hong Kong's new generation of realist cinema.

# Significance

Wong Chun's case forms a deliberate counterpoint to the three "recruited scholar-presidents" earlier in this article: he is an alumnus who was trained at CityU at the undergraduate level and has since made a name in the creative industries, representing the talent the university can produce in film and creative media—a domain far from its traditional strengths. The visibility of CityU alumni across creative media and popular culture (see ./notable-alumni.md, ./alumni-in-culture-and-media.md) complements its mainstream image in engineering and business, forming another face of CityU's human tapestry.

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