Since 1963, over 150,000 outstanding students have graduated from CUHK and society has benefited from the University’s wide range of scholarly research. Behind these significant achievements is a group of excellent teaching and research members who have provided strong support throughout the years.

The University has maintained its excellence in research—seven projects under the Areas of Excellence which are supported by the University Grants Committee were led by CUHK professors. With the approval of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the University has established five national-level laboratories. To support the vision of becoming a first-class comprehensive research university, CUHK set up the Strategic Recruitment Fund early this year to further support the worldwide search for outstanding faculty members.

Why is CUHK such an attractive place for scholars worldwide? Let’s hear it from our professors.

With its high nutritional value, soybean is one of the most important foods in the world. However, due to the reduction of arable lands and fresh water resources, the production of soybeans will not meet the demand of the growing population. In view of the critical situation, Prof. Hon-Ming Lam, Director of the Center for Soybean Research at CUHK, and his team have put great effort into developing stress tolerant soybeans in order to increase soybean production.

After over 10 years of hard work, the team has successfully cloned the salt tolerant gene from wild soybeans. This finding was just recently published in Nature Communications, a famous multi-disciplinary scientific journal. Now Prof. Lam has started to work with soybean breeders in China to produce soybeans that can be grown on saline lands, via non-GM methods.

Soybeans were actually first domesticated in China. However, the US has become the biggest producer of soybean with its advanced farming technology, and China is becoming more and more dependent on its import. Therefore Prof. Lam named his project ‘Homecoming of Soybeans’ with the hope of bringing back a ‘super-soybean’ that is tolerant to both salt and drought in its homeland.