ABOUT CHANWUYI LIFESTYLE MEDICINE

Professor Suiyin Agnes Chan

Chan Sui Yin, Agnes is currently a professor at the Department of Psychology of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Director of the Research Center for Neuropsychological Well-Being. She got her undergraduate degree as well as double master’s degrees in psychology and social work from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She obtained a doctoral degree in 1995 majoring in clinical neuropsychology from the University of California at San Diego.

Prof. Chan’s research interest has been on clinical neuropsychology and neuropsychological intervention. Her research has been published in Top-ranking journals including Nature, Archive of Neurology, Cancer, Neuropsychology and Journal of Affective Disorder. Her earlier work was focused on a computational modelling predicting the cognitive deterioration of Alzheimer’s disease, and this line of research has earned her two awards from the American Psychological Association and the International Neuropsychology Association. Prof. Chan then continued to study the brain plasticity related to earlier life experience, and this theoretical model was published in Nature and then reported by New York Time, Washing Post, ABC, BBC and other media worldwide. In 2004, Professor Chan was awarded the Early Career Award by the American Psychological Association for her outstanding contribution to research and development in brain science. She was awarded the Outstanding Research Award by the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2011, and was also awarded as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Persons in Hong Kong in 2003.

Prof. Chan had held positions several honorary positions including Adjunct Professor at the San Diego State University and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Consultant to the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the University of California at San Diego. She was the Associate Editor of Neuropsychology, and was on the editorial board of Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, and board member of the International Neuropsychological Society. Apart from these honours, Prof. Chan has received invitations to speak around the world, including the Korean National Assembly and Harvard University.

Besides, she has contributed significantly to develop of Clinical Neuropsychology in Hong Kong and China. Prof. Chan is the founding director of Pro-talent Association Ltd which is a social enterprise to provide clinical training for individuals with brain disorders. She was the Founding Chairperson of the Hong Kong Neuropsychological Society, Honorary Consultant at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the Duchess of Kent Children’s Hospital at Sandy Bay, Honorary Professor at the Shantou University in China, and Honorary Professor of the Zhengzhou Children Hospital.

Being a very experienced clinical neuropsychologist herself, Prof. Chan has been providing clinical services for patients with brain disorders for over 20 years, specializing in Alzheimer’s disease, autism spectrum disorders, amnesia, stroke, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. While she was in the United States, she had served at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Medical Center, the Sharp Rehabilitation Center in San Diego, and the Alzheimer’s disease Research Center. After returning to Hong Kong, Prof. Chan continued her work on patients with brain disorders. Given the limited assessment tools and mind-body intervention suitable for the Chinese population, she has developed indigenous clinical instruments and intervention programs for use with the local Chinese population. The Hong Kong List Learning Test and the Chinese version of the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale, that was developed by Prof. Chan, has been two most commonly used clinical neuropsychological tests in Hong Kong. Her other publications (in Chinese) included Four-Principles to Enhance Children’s Brain Functioning (Chung Hwa Book Co., 2009), In Search of One’s Heart (World Publishing Company, 2009), Dejian Mind-Body Intervention 5th Edition (Chanwuyi Publishing House Limited, 2013) and Shaolin Chanwuyi (Chanwuyi Publishing House Limited, 2009).

Prof. Chan is an ardent supporter of the integration of Eastern and Western approaches in developing more effective intervention programs for brain problems. Prof. Chan has passion on Chinese martial arts, and started practising martial arts at the age of 18, and consequently learned Chanwuyi from Master Shi Dejian. She is one of the pioneers in applying Chinese medical philosophy using the Western scientific approach, and has published papers in exploring the effects of different Chinese interventions on patients with brain disorders. For the past several years, she has been conducting a series of scientific research to study the effect of the Chanwuyi Lifestyle Medicine on neurological and psychiatric disorder and the findings are very promising. The Chanwuyi methods have been showed to be effective in improving emotion, physical health and cognition function.