Bulletin No. 2, 2021

Greater Expectations : CUHK's vision and action in the Greater Bay Area 17 ‘A re you sure we don’t have to put off the interview till later, Professor Chan?’ Having just flown back to Hong Kong and settled down at one of the local hotels for procedural self-quarantine, Prof. Chan Wai-yee, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (PVC)/Vice-President of CUHK, immediately joined us for a ZOOM interview—a big smile plastered on his face without any trace of fatigue. ‘Don’t worry about it! It is nothing really,’ he chuckled. ‘Besides, there will be another event with CUHK-Shenzhen that I have to attend two hours later. Might as well get all GBA-related work done in one go. Am I right?’ When it comes to educational and administrative experience in the GBA region, Professor Chan is definitely someone who should not be trifled with: after founding CUHK’s School of Biomedical Sciences in 2009, Professor Chan began to expand the University's connections across the mainland, successfully brokering contact with the Shenzhen Municipal Government and establishing the CUHK–BGI Innovation Institute of Transomics in 2011. ‘This could be regarded as one of my very first “GBA” endeavours, although, as you already know, the term wasn’t even coined until quite recently,’ he explained. ‘Scientific research was a pretty alien concept in South China at that time, yet there were huge resources which can complement the development of talents in the pertinent fields, especially those in clinical medicine.’ It is this realization—to capitalize on each other’s strengths for the betterment of scientific and academic research—that shaped and fermented his determination down the road. Since then, Professor Chan has actively reached out to other cities and areas in the Bay Area, setting up core labs for biomedical science in SZRI in 2013 and collaborating with Jinan University to establish the Key Laboratory of Regenerative Medicine in Guangzhou in 2016. ‘My role as PVC, overall, is to assist CUHK to implement development strategies in the GBA so as to achieve an array of targets, including seizing all available opportunities provided in the Bay Area, advocating advancements in areas of science and innovation, and establishing collaborations with top-notch institutions and universities.’ As such, Professor Chan has had to devise appropriate strategies in order to satisfy these goals. These plans fall under three main categories: subsidiaries, joint ventures and collaborative agencies. Baby steps to giant strides