The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) presented its Vice-Chancellor’s Scholarships for Excellence to eight distinguished students recently, in recognition of their outstanding achievements.
At the ceremony, CUHK Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Rocky S. Tuan said, “The education we provide at CUHK aims to nurture future global leaders with strong moral character, emotional resilience, a sense of social responsibility and an innovative spirit, as exemplified in our motto ‘From Learning and Temperance to Virtue’. I hope that you will continue to grasp and take advantage of the many valuable opportunities which CUHK offers, sharpen your competitive edge, engage with people from diverse backgrounds and think about how you can contribute to your city, your country and the world.”
Eric Wang, a year 2 student in the Department of Psychology, is interested in studying human cognition, a characteristic that distinguishes humans from other species. In the summer of his first year, he participated in Neuromatch Academy’s courses in computational neuroscience to learn programming skills and machine learning techniques. His research interests focus on the human sense of fear, particularly the visual art style weirdcore, which evokes fear through familiar but not entirely familiar images. Humans make predictions about the world using their internal models of the external environment, which forms their behavioural logic. If there is an error in the calculation, the internal model is updated to make a better prediction next time. The weirdcore phenomenon may also be caused by prediction errors. Eric hopes to explore the causes and treatments of phobias by studying error prediction mechanisms.
Valerie Chan is a year 2 student majoring in Biomedical Sciences. When she was in her first year, she was a laboratory intern in the School of Biomedical Sciences, where she assisted in research on using human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes to simulate cardiotoxicity. These heart muscle cells were used to test the side effects of a chemotherapy drug, with the aim of reducing the pain of cancer patients. This research deepened her understanding of how chemotherapy drugs cause heart damage, and also helped her discover her ambition to conduct stem cell research in the future and contribute to human health. She is grateful for the generous support of the Vice-Chancellor’s Scholarship for Excellence, which has allowed her to plan an overseas summer research internship in the short term, laying a solid foundation for her future career in scientific research.
The Scholarship was established in the 2021/22 academic year. A maximum of eight scholarships of HK$50,000 each are given out to Year 1 students on the basis of excellent academic achievements at entrance, academic results at CUHK, communications skills and a track record of distinguished leadership and non-academic performance.
