CUHK and Cambridge take autism collaboration to next level

CUHK and the University of Cambridge (Cambridge) have taken a significant step forward in their partnership on autism research. Championed by Prof. Patrick Leung, Programme Co-Director of the Autism Research Theme at the Brain and Mind Institute (BMI), CUHK, and Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge, the two universities first signed a MOU in 2015 to encourage collaborative basic and applied research on autism. As part of the collaboration, a post-doc fellowship was recently established to support the joint work for an initial period of 18 months till 31 August 2018. It is anticipated that a joint laboratory on autism research will be developed along the way to further consolidate and build on the collaborative effort.

Prof. Patrick Leung said, ‘We are committed to working with the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge, arguably among the most respected and influential autism research centres in the world, to conduct long-term, programmatic research that would unmask the mystery behind the disorder. We are simultaneously proceeding in two fronts—basic research to explore the molecular mechanisms of autism and applied research to alleviate the core cognitive deficits of autism, e.g., emotion recognition, via behavioural and educational methods in cost-efficient platforms.’