Hi Nerd Niters! We are super excited to be working with Croucher Foundation for the next edition of Nerd Nite! We will be having 3 Croucher scholars alumni giving talks on an Array of Amazing Areas that forms an Alliteration of As! Stay tuned for updates on the speakers and their topics! Can’t wait to see all you beautiful people!

Event: Nerd Nite Hong Kong X Croucher Foundation
Date: 22nd July 2019
Time: 8:00 p.m.
Location: The Artist House, Fashion Walk, 9 Kingston St, Causeway Bay
Entry Fee: Free! Thanks to the support provided by the venue! You just got to buy your own drinks!

Speaker 1: Dr. Kenneth Leung (Croucher Fellowship 2000)
Topic: Renovation of Seawalls for Housing More Marine Life

Speaker 2: Dr. Winston Sun (Croucher Fellowship 2001)
Topic: 3D space digitization using LIDAR for mostly indoor (and sometimes outdoor) applications

Speaker 3: Dr. Carmen Wong (Croucher Innovation Award 2017, Croucher Fellowship 2009)
Topic: A journey from a childhood dream to reality – Do what you love. Love what you do

Quick Nerdisms:

Speaker 1: Why are there so few marine organisms living on artificial seawalls? How can we enhance marine biodiversity on these structures? In this Nerd talk, I will address these questions and call for more innovative ideas

Speaker 2: TBA

Speaker 3: My strong desire for the quest of knowledge has made me to be considered one of the nerds in high school. Luckily, I still had a lot of good friends who embraced my nerdiness. As teenagers, my high school friends got obsessed with parties but strangely I got obsessed with science. I was patient enough to let time take care of things. After 20 years while all my friends got tired of partying, I am still obsessed with science, even more than before. That’s the beauty of science.

Nerd Cred:

Speaker 1: Kenneth Leung is Professor of Aquatic Ecology and Toxicology at School of Biological Sciences in the University of Hong Kong. He received the Croucher Fellowship in 2000. So far, he has published over 190 peer-reviewed articles which are principally related to marine ecology, pollution, ecotoxicology and environmental risk assessment as well as ecosystem restoration via eco-engineering. Globally, he is among the Top 1% Cited Scientists in Ecology/Environmental Sciences, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Essential Science Indicators. Owing to his professional achievements and dedicated community services, he was selected as one of the “Ten Outstanding Young Persons” for Hong Kong by Junior Chamber International in 2010 and appointed as a Justice of the Peace by the HKSAR Government in 2018. In 2017, he was awarded the 19th Biwako Prize for Ecology by the Ecological Society of Japan in recognition of his contributions to aquatic ecology and toxicology in Asia-Pacific, and conferred as a Fellow of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC). In 2018, he was selected as one of the top 100 Asian Scientists by Asian Scientist Magazine.

Speaker 2: In 2001, Winston received generous help from The Croucher Foundation and spent 3 years in Switzerland. Besides some research work, Winston commuted mainly by bicycle and learned to enjoy TV-free life.
In 2004, Winston received generous help from the Japan Society of Promotion of Science to work at the University of Tokyo. Besides some cleanroom work, Winston continued to commute mainly by the same bicycle and learned to speak and read a bit of Japanese, which turned out to be quite useful every now and then. Also he acquired some strange techniques during his no-TV free time including but not limited to one-hand typing and no-kick breaststroke swim, which basically rewired his brain and enabled him to see things slightly differently.
In 2010, Winston traveled to Singapore as a research scientist. Besides some research work, Winston refined his no-kick breaststroke to backstroke, became a Durian fan, and most importantly learned to ride unicycle from a generous French unicyclist.
Winston is back to HK in mid 2014, enjoyed no work for couple months, joined a lab in CityU as a researcher, moved to the lab’s ShenZhen branch, stayed there for two years, witnessed the beginning of the cashless economy, the rise and fall of the shared-bike boom, and proved that HK folks can survive the dynamic situation in SZ, as long as one is prepared to learn and adapt.
Winston returned to HK and joined a small startup in mid 2018. He is leading an engineering team to work on various prototypes of LIDAR indoor scanner.

Speaker 3: Dr Carmen Wong obtained her BSc degree in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of British Columbia in Canada, MSc degree in Biotechnology from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and PhD degree in Cancer Biology from the University of Hong Kong (HKU). She received the Croucher Fellowship in 2009 and obtained her post-doctoral training at the Johns Hopkins University in the United States. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Pathology and a principal investigator of the State Key Laboratory for Liver Research of HKU.