I’m back in London for a little while. We returned from Hong Kong last week after a very productive and enjoyable two months. I was a bit shocked by the falling snow that greeted us when we stepped off the Robert Q bus – perhaps we should have stayed away a bit longer? – but at least it didn’t stick around.
In a previous post I talked about my visit to Chinese University. Since then I visited two more of Hong Kong’s universities: Hong Kong Baptist University and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. I gave talks to the physics department at both places.
The physics department at HKBU is fairly small – I think they have about eight full time faculty. There are several people there who do nano-materials type research and study optical properties of materials, and a fellow who does theoretical nonlinear dynamics applied to neuroscience. I saw some interesting labs and, as always happens when I talk to people about their research, I got some good (maybe) ideas for things to think about. My host there told me a little bit about a new program in “Energy Science” they were developing. What he didn’t tell me, and what I learned later from a friend at another university, was that their undergrad physics program had been killed! Introducing this new program in Energy Science was apparently part of their survival strategy in the wake of this. Apparently they were not getting many physics majors and their program was ranked lowest among physics programs in Hong Kong, so it was eliminated. Scary!
HKUST is a very different place. It is a relatively new university – they just celebrated their 20th anniversary – but it is already ranked in the top 10 in Asia. That’s pretty good! The university was started by the Brits shortly before their lease in HK ended. What I was told is that they had some money in the bank, and, rather than giving it to the Chinese, they used it to build a new university and a new airport. Both are great! The physics department at HKUST is fairly large – about 30 faculty, plus several visitors and soft-money researchers. It’s a very vibrant place. The people I talked to were doing really exciting research in soft matter and nonlinear dynamics; they also have people in many other areas of physics. HKUST also has one of the most beautiful settings of any university in the universe. The picture shows the view from their main building, with a couple of tourists in the foreground. My friend there has an office with an even more spectacular view.
On the same day I was visiting HKUST, a delegation from MIT was there to discuss co-operative international ventures. Western is far from being the only university trying to build ties with Asian universities – in fact, everyone is doing it! I found the article in the Western News about Western’s trip to China, and about how we are trying to “set ourselves apart from the crowd” to be a bit amusing – there really is a crowd, and as far as I can see we are no different from everyone else in this regard.
I also visited Chengdu, in Sichuan, China. Leo Lau, formerly Director of Surface Science Western runs a Green Energy Institute there. Unfortunately my visit there coincided exactly with a major Chinese holiday: Qingming, known as Tomb Sweeping Day. This is like Thanksgiving in that everyone goes home for the holidays. Of course I had no idea of this. One consequence was that Leo’s lab was closed on the days I visited, which meant that, apart from some technical discussions over dinner, I was a tourist for three days. Leo and his wife Margaret were excellent hosts. We went for a great hike in the nearby mountains, saw some of the sights of the city, and had some wonderful food.
What’s next? Once I get through the 30-odd things on my list of things I have to do while I am in my office here, we are off to Vancouver in early May. I will be working at UBC for a month. More on that later!