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CUHK Ophthalmology Forum 2012 cum HKEH 20th Anniversary Symposium at the Hong Kong Eye Hospital

Saturday, January 12, 2013

In December 2012, I was invited to give a plenary lecture in the CUHK Ophthalmology Forum 2012 cum HKEH 20th Anniversary Symposium at the Hong Kong Eye Hospital.

Fai giving a plenary lecture on using zebrafish to find new drugs to treat eye diseases

This was a meeting right after the The 8th International Symposium of Ophthalmology, in which I shared with a group of international delegates about our vision on screening drugs to treat eye diseases with the zebrafish model. Many delegates stayed behind to attend this CUHK and HKEH forum, in which we shared new insights into eye research and clinical practice.

Some of the participants to the forum, including Profs. Chris Leung (CUHK), Calvin Pang (CUHK), Clement Tam (CUHK), Stanley Chi (HKEH), Zibing Jin (Wenzhou eye hospital), Wei Li (NEI), Yuk Fai Leung (Purdue), Neeru Gupta (University of Toronto), and Tien Yin Wong (Singapore National Eye Centre). The full schedule of the meeting is available here.

Saying good bye to Prof. Neeru Gupta

Giving presentation award to graduate students

 

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Is professor career stressful?

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Forbes has just published an article about professor’s career as the No. 1 of the least stressful jobs of 2013, and that has caused a huge uproar by many colleagues in the comments. Apparently, the article was written with misconceptions of what a professor’s life is like, based on innuendos and information from CareerCast. While the author has made an addendum after hearing a lot of angry comments in two days, the tone is disappointingly impersonal. Basically she only said I hear you, I am only relaying the message from CareerCast, thank you for your comments and I understand your life MAY be more stressful than portrayed. You can actually see how people are critical about that too, and I am not repeating that here.

For students who are fascinated about “doing research” as a career/becoming a professor, I encourage you to read through these discussions, as well as a followup article “Top 10 Reasons Being a University Professor is a Stressful Job” in Forbes by another contributor who has a science background to see the actual dedication that one has to put in to be in this profession.

Updated 2013-01-06.

I just received a link to another take of this discussion: “The Least Stressful Job for 2013? A Real Look at Being a Professor in the US“.

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2012 Christmas Party

Saturday, January 5, 2013

A highlight of a memorable evening!

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More people dying from obesity than malnutrition

Saturday, December 29, 2012

From the Metro news:

World now has ‘more people dying from obesity than malnutrition’

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A shit paper…

Saturday, December 29, 2012

is published in PLOS neglected tropical diseases. However, the study itself is certainly not shitty.

An In-Depth Analysis of a Piece of Shit: Distribution of Schistosoma mansoni and Hookworm Eggs in Human Stool

 

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The 8th International Symposium of Ophthalmology – Hong Kong

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Fai has just participated in the 8th ISO-HK from December 14-16, 2012 and interacted with many colleagues around the world.

From Left to right: Prof. Zibing Jin (Wenzhou Medical College Eye Hospital), Prof. Calvin Pang (Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Chinese University of Hong Kong), Prof. Yuk Fai Leung (Department of Biological Sciences, Purdue University). See the whole album by the conference organizer here.

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The visit of a delegation from the Joint Shantou International Eye Center

Thursday, November 22, 2012

On 12th November 2012, Prof. Calvin Chi-Pui Pang from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Prof. Haoyu Chen from the Joint Shantou International Eye Center (JSIEC), Shantou University & the Chinese University of Hong Kong visited the Leung Lab and the research facilities at Purdue University.

Prof Pang and Chen first met with Prof. Marietta Harrison, Associate Vice-President for Research and Dr. Geanie Umberger, Assistant Vice President for Corporate and Foundation Relations to discuss collaborative plans between the Leung Lab, Purdue and JSIEC. Our long-term goal is to explore the opportunities in clinical eye research and drug screening  in China.

From left to right: Dr. Umberger, Prof. Harrison, Prof. Pang, Prof. Leung, and Prof. Chen.

Then, Profs. Pang and Chen visited the Bindley Bioscience Center. Dr. Tommy Sors, the Center Project Manager, showcased the Purdue’s infrastructure for preclinical investigations.

From left to right: Prof. Chen, Prof. Leung, Prof. Pang and Dr. Sors.

Finally, there was a dinner gathering with Prof. Marietta and other distinguished professors from the Department of Biological Sciences to celebrate friendship and new collaborative relationships.

Back row: Prof. Don Ready, Prof. Chen, Prof. Leung and Dr. Liyun Zhang, postdoctoral fellow in the Leung Lab.
Front row: Prof. Bill Pak, Prof. Marietta, Prof. Pang, and Prof. Richard Kuhn.

 

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The public’s discussion on open access to scientific research

Thursday, November 15, 2012

I have been paying attention to the ongoing discussion on open access to scientific research in the news media and have collected a number of interesting articles.  Here I will keep a record of a few interesting ones

2012-11-08 From the Guardian: “Open Access: ‘we no longer need expensive publishing networks‘”

2012-06-19 From the New Scientist: “Set science free from publishers’ paywalls”

2012-04-17 From the Harvard Faculty Advisory Council Memorandum on Journal Pricing: “Major Periodical Subscriptions Cannot Be Sustained”

I once wrote about the difficulty in getting access to the research papers here and I had to ask my friends from my home country to download that for me. The expensive journal subscription is obviously one reason that caused the problem. Obviously publishing in high-quality, open access journals with publisher like PLOS and BMC can be a good solution. However for many practical reasons, i.e. to survive and be recognized, scientists often do not act what they advocate is good. Let’s hope the field can wise up and treasure what is actually important to us.

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One of the many causes of the financial crisis in universities these days

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

A colleague at Purdue puts it in perspective in a Bloomberg News article:  College Costs Rise With $250,000-a-Year Bureaucrats

“Why is it that we can’t find any money for more faculty, but there seems to be an almost unlimited budget for administrators?” asks J. Paul Robinson, a Purdue University professor of biomedical engineering and chairman of the school’s faculty senate. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

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A guy tested positive on a pregnancy test.. it turns out that he had cancer

Saturday, November 10, 2012

This is an interesting story that I came across last week. It started with a guy playing with his ex-girlfriend’s pregnancy test… and the result was positive! He told his friend about it and he made a rage comic and posted it on reddit.

Several users pointed out that he should check with his oncologist, and he did. As it turns out, he had a rare form of testicular cancer that would produce human chorionic gonadotropin, a hormone that is being detected in the pregnancy test. This (un)fortunate incident helped his early detection of the cancer and saved his life.

They announced the update through another rage comic again.

Boing boing has an elaborate discussion of the science behind this.

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