Welcome Class of 2023
On 8 December at a ceremony at the Ritz-Carlton, Croucher Foundation Trustee Sophia Zhu Yibing presented awards to the latest cohort of Croucher Study Award recipients.
Croucher Study Awards recognise talented Hong Kong students and early-career researchers who, through a process of intensive education and exposure to prominent academics in their respective fields, will develop independent and critical abilities and form enduring collaborative partnerships, to enable them to become next generation of leaders of science, technology and medicine in Hong Kong.
Speaking after the ceremony Ms Zhu said, “it is my great honour and privilege to present these awards on behalf of the Croucher Foundation to a group of remarkable students and postdoctoral fellows who, by taking on some of the most fundamental challenges in science, stand poised to expand the frontier of human knowledge”.
Twenty-four awards were presented to assist scholars with their doctoral studies and postdoctoral research in subjects ranging from quantum information to immunology and from astrophysics to AI.
Sir Gregory Winter FRS, Chairman of the Board of Trustees said, “Our founder, Noel Croucher, believed firmly that science and technology would form the bedrock of Hong Kong’s future prosperity. And, with great prescience, he determined that the resources of his Foundation would be deployed most effectively by identifying promising individuals and supporting them generously to pursue bold dreams and tackle the big challenges. I think history has shown how right he was.”
Croucher Study Awards have a value of up to US$260,000 and cover tuition fees, a maintenance allowance, medical insurance, airfares and other allowances including an academic development allowance to enable recipients to attend international conferences. Recipients of Croucher Study Awards are admitted to learning universities around the world.
“We commend the Croucher class of 2023 for their bold scientific ideas and wish them every success in their academic endeavours and future careers”, said Ms Zhu.
Winners of Croucher Study Awards 2023
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Croucher Studentships 2023
Artemis Chan – for doctoral study at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology on identification of small molecule therapeutics for the treatment of Leigh Syndrome
Yee Lok Tsoi – for doctoral study at the University of Hong Kong on the role of annexins in hepatocellular carcinoma
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Croucher Scholarships 2023
Michael Law – for doctoral study at Massachusetts Institute of Technology on complexity bounds in harmonic map heat flow
Harry Shum – for doctoral study at the University of Nottingham on nonlinear evolution beyond general relativity and the standard model
Danson Loi – for doctoral study at the University of Oxford on the application of multi-modal long-read single-cell sequencing to understand the role of clonality in multiple myeloma development
Zhiyuan Bai – for doctoral study at Yale University on moduli spaces in geometry and number theory
Xiang Zou – for doctoral study at the University of Toronto on new approaches to achieve symmetric private information retrieval in quantum information
Daniel Sin – for doctoral study at Imperial College London on phage-bacterial interactions in the gut
Lucien Ng – for doctoral study at Georgia Institute of Technology on practical secure multiparty computation
Leon Chan – for doctoral study at the University of Colorado-Boulder on supermassive black holes using computational methods
Candice Lei – for doctoral study at the University of Virginia on understanding the activation and inhibition of signalling heterogeneity in complex tumour tissues
Titan Lai – for doctoral study at Imperial College London on biomedical probes for imaging and inhibiting heme oxygenase activity
Amy Tao – for doctoral study at University of Wisconsin–Madison on Galois module structure of cube power classes for bicubic extensions
Sophie Liu – for doctoral study at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on investigating the eco-hydrological impacts of climate change by improving the representation of vegetation dynamics in hydrological models
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Oxford Croucher Scholarship 2023
Augustine Luk – for doctoral study at the University of Oxford on predicting antimicrobial resistance in Gram-negative bacteria using computational methods
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Croucher Fellowships 2023
Dr Mike Lau – to undertake postdoctoral research at the Heidelberg Institute of Theoretical Studies on common envelopes in massive stars
Dr Pok Man Tam – to undertake postdoctoral research at Princeton University on the classification and detection of topological quantum matter
Dr Edmond Lam – to undertake postdoctoral research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology on membrane distillation with capillarity-based methods for desalination processes
Dr Aaron Chow – to undertake postdoctoral research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Ricci flow on pinched manifolds and existence of blackholes in higher dimensions
Dr Hanlun Jiang – to undertake postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley on developing a novel deep learning framework for predicting and designing transcription factor sequence specificity
Dr Enoch Tsui – to undertake postdoctoral research at the University of Tokyo on the mechanisms and factors controlling the seafall re-intensification of tropical cyclones
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Max Planck Croucher Fellowship 2023
Dr Isaac Wong – to undertake postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden on an in vitro comparison of pericentriolar material in flies and worms
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Todd Croucher Fellowship at Christ’s College Cambridge
Dr Richard Tse – to undertake postdoctoral research on self-healing supramolecular slide-ring hydrogels with stimuli responsiveness