CUHK conferred honorary doctorates to esteemed scholars
CUHK awards honorary degrees to four academics. From left: Prof. Gene Block, Prof. James Heckman, Prof. Sir Paul Nurse, and Prof. Jianwei Pan.
CUHK conferred honorary doctorates to four distinguished persons in June, in recognition of their outstanding contributions in their respective areas of achievement in higher education, fighting social inequality and scientific research. They are Prof. Gene D. Block, Prof. James Heckman, Prof. Sir Paul Nurse and Prof. Jianwei Pan.
Prof. Gene Block served as the Chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Throughout his 17-year tenure, UCLA has prioritised academic excellence and maintained its position as the highest-ranked public university in the US for seven years. Under Prof. Block’s leadership, UCLA has devoted itself to civic engagement, diversity, and increasing access to public higher education for traditionally underprivileged students.
The second American awardee was Prof. James Heckman, the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2000 for his efforts to correct problems encountered in the selection of representative samples during research. The work was closely related to his studies into the effects of diversity and heterogeneity in populations, and in particular the status of African Americans in the US.
Joining the selection of CUHK honourees was British geneticist Prof. Sir Paul Nurse, a co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with two other scientists. He dedicates his life to solving the mysteries of developmental biology, especially the ‘cell cycle’ and the molecular changes during this process. He is currently the Director of the Francis Crick Institute in London, Europe’s biggest biomedical laboratory, where he still actively contributes to cell research.
The fourth honouree was physicist Prof. Jianwei Pan who has been examining quantum physics for two decades. As one of the pioneers in experimental research in quantum information, he has significant influence in the fields of quantum optics, quantum information, and quantum foundations.
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