Campus Digest

Faculty of Science holds Honorary Doctorate Distinguished Lecture by Professor Alan Rickinson

Monday, 19 September 2022

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Professor Alexander Wai (5th from right), Professor Rick Wong (4th from right), Professor Guo Yike (3rd from right), Professor Liu Jiming (5th from left) and members of the Department of Chemistry take a photo with Professor Alan Rickinson, who hosted the online lecture.
Professor Rickinson said Hong Kong is one of the world’s leading centres for nasopharyngeal carcinoma research.
Professor Rickinson shares his experience and valuable views with the audience.

 

The Faculty of Science held the Honorary Doctorate Distinguished Lecture by Professor Alan Rickinson, a renowned viral biologist and a leading researcher on Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), on 7 September.

In the lecture, which was themed “Dangerous Liaisons: The Story of Viruses and Cancer”, Professor Rickinson introduced the relationship between viruses and cancer, saying that EBV is carried by most of the public as a life-long asymptomatic infection. He also explained the main underlying factors that make nasopharyngeal carcinoma one of the most prevalent types of cancer in Hong Kong.

More than 250 academics, students, alumni and friends of the University attended the lecture. They included Professor Alexander Wai, President and Vice-Chancellor; Professor Rick Wong, Interim Provost; Professor Guo Yike, Vice-President (Research and Development); Professor Liu Jiming, Dean of Science; and Professor Kelvin Leung, Head of the Department of Chemistry.

Professor Rickinson is currently the Emeritus Professor of Cancer Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. He received the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, from HKBU in 2021. His research team won the prestigious Translational Cancer Research Prize in 2015 for the development of a therapeutic vaccine that targets EBV-associated cancers.