Croucher Class of 2011
A total of 23 young scientists were awarded Croucher Scholarships or Croucher Fellowships in 2011. They were selected in a competitive process including a paper based preliminary screening and an interview with a panel of scientists including at least one expert in the specific field of each candidate.
These talented individuals have been admitted to world-class universities and research institutes including Berkeley, Caltech, Harvard, MIT, UCSF and Stanford in the US and the Free University of Berlin, Cambridge, CNRS, Imperial College, the Karolinska Institute and Oxford in Europe.
Welcoming the “Croucher Class of 2011”, Mak noted that career path of a research scientist was not easy. To address fundamental scientific questions, and to work at the frontiers of knowledge required extraordinary dedication and an aptitude for hard work. But the results would be rewarding on a personal level and could help to solve some of the most important challenges facing this planet and its inhabitants.
Croucher Scholars and Fellows from previous years who had returned to Hong Kong joined the gathering and were invited to share their collective experience of life as a Croucher scholar and study overseas. Professor Randy Poon, Croucher Senior Research Fellow 2002, spoke about his life as an artist and scientist, and showed slides of his paintings and sculpture.