Bulletin No. 2, 2014

Scientists, Muses and their Labs  13  CUHK-UU Joint Centre for Language, Mind and Brain Co-Director : Prof. Patrick Wong This joint centre between CUHK and Utrecht University (UU) in the Netherlands was established in 2014 to provide an international platform for the promotion of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research in language, mind and brain, by pooling and consolidating the strengths of CUHK and UU in relevant areas. The centre is strongly interdisciplinary in its orientation, connecting the humanities with biomedical sciences, life sciences, and social science, and covering areas such as linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, genetics and speech-language therapy. In particular, the language learning and development theme at CUHK echoes and complements the Youth and Identity focus area at UU where youth covers the age range from infancy to adolescence and beyond. The centre will pursue three parallel focus areas of research, namely the biological basis of language learning and development; cognitive neuroscience; and speech-language therapy. Anchored in linguis tic s as a focus area of research, the joint centre will nurture disciplines at CUHK that have a shared interest in language structure, language learning, communicative and literacy disorders, as well as cognitive neuroscience. A key component of the centre is a Genetic Core housed in the CUHK School of Biomedical Sciences in the Faculty of Medicine which supports cross-faculty and interdisciplinary collaboration in genetic research related to language, mind and brain, fostering academic exchanges on and between the two campuses.