Bulletin Spring‧Summer 2001

News in Brief University Members Honoured • Prof. Arthur K.C . Li, vice-chancellor of the University, was conferred an honorary doctorate by Soka University in Japan on 20th December 1999. On the same day, he was presented the Certificate o f Soka Friendship by the student union o f Soka University. Prof. L i was also awarded the honorary degree of Doctor o f Letters by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology on 12th November 1999. • Prof. Charles Kao, honorary professor of engineering, has been selected by Asiaweek magazine as one of the five most influential people in Asia in the 20th century. The selection was made by a team of editors from Asiaweek. Prof. Kao , the only surviving candidate, tops the 'Science and Technology' category. The four other influential people are D e n g X i a o p i n g ( P o l i t i c s a nd Government), Ak i o Morita, co-founder of Sony (Business and Economics) , A k i r a Kurosawa (Arts, Literature, andCulture), and Mohandas K . Gandhi (Moral and Spiritual Leadership). • Prof. He n r y N.C. Wong, professor of chemistry, has been elected Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. • P r o f. De n n is L am , p r o f e s s or i n the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, was selected as one of the 100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow for the year 2000 by the Wo r ld Economic Fo r um in Switzerland. Vice-Chancellor Re-elected VP of AUPC Prof. A r t hu r K.C. L i was re-elected the vice- president of the Association o f University Presidents of China (AUPC) for another two- year term by the Council of the AUPC at its third meeting on 5th December 1999. The other vice-president is Prof. Wang Shenghong of Fudan University and the new president is Prof. Wang Dazhong of Tsinghua University. Outstanding Achievements of CUHK Students Honours for Engineering Students A team of students from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering won eighth place among 60 finalist teams i n the 24th Association for Computing Machinery ( ACM ) International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals held in Orlando from 15th to 19th March 1999. This marks the first time that a team from Hong Kong has ranked among the top 10 at the A C M World Finals, commonly held as the top programming competition for university students of computing. The 60 finalist teams were selected from over 2,400 teams which participate d in the preliminaries. This year's contest contained eight d i f f i cu l t problems i n graph theory, g e ome t r y , c omb i n a t o r i c s , c o n s t r a i nt satisfaction, and simulations. Each team had five hours to solve as many problems as News in Brief 53