Press Release
HKBU to confer Honorary University Fellowships on seven distinguished persons
Sunday, 15 Aug 2021
Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) has announced the conferment of Honorary University Fellowships on seven distinguished persons in recognition of their outstanding contributions to a wide variety of areas and their support of society.
The seven Honorary University Fellowship recipients are: Mr Edmund Au Tin-fung (區田豐), Professor Bridie Raban, Ms Shi Nan-sun (施南生), Professor Shu Chi-wang (舒其望), Ms Eileen Tsui Li, BBS, JP (徐莉), Mr Jaap van Zweden, SBS (梵志登) and Ms Wu Man (吳蠻).
Mr Edmund Au Tin-fung
Mr Edmund Au Tin-fung is a successful entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in the finance sector. He has held the position of director of several listed companies in Hong Kong, and is currently the General Manager of Prior Global Asset Management Group Limited.
Mr Au has made significant contributions to society. Under his leadership, Prior Global Asset Management Group Limited initiated a community development project in 2016 to assist low-income families in Hong Kong by offering them low-rent housing. He also cares about the nurturing of future leaders, and he supported HKBU for the establishment of the Prior Scholarship Fund for Outstanding BBA Students and the Prior Scholarship Fund for Outstanding Mainland Students. He also actively supports the University's various student development initiatives.
As a dedicated alumnus, Mr Au renders his support and wise counsel to HKBU as the Honorary President and Director of the HKBU Foundation and a member of the Foundation's Entrepreneur Committee.
Professor Bridie Raban
Professor Bridie Raban is a veteran scholar in early childhood education. She is an Honorary Professor at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts in 1992. She has carried out significant research into early childhood education and care as well as early literacy development.
During her prominent academic career, Professor Raban was the Professor of Primary Education (Early Years) at the University of Warwick in the UK; Professor of Early Childhood Studies at The University of Melbourne; and a Senior Research Fellow of the Australian Council for Education Research. She was seconded to the Department of Education of the Federal Government of Australia as its first Research Fellow in 1999-2000.
From 2012 to 2014, Professor Raban was a Visiting Professor in the Early Childhood and Elementary Education Division of HKBU's School of Continuing Education. She both taught and led research that moved the culture of “assessment of learning” to “assessment for learning”, and she offered wise counsel on scholarly activities, curriculum planning and quality assurance.
Ms Shi Nan-sun
Ms Shi Nan-sun is a celebrated film producer who has contributed significantly to the local film industry since the early 1980s.
Ms Shi joined Cinema City Company Limited in 1981 and co-founded Film Workshop Company Limited in 1984. The success of the two companies was pivotal to the development of the local film industry. She also co-founded Distribution Workshop (HK) Limited, which specialises in the distribution of innovative Asian feature films.
Ms Shi's remarkable contributions to the industry have been recognised with a number of international awards, including the Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the Consul General of France in Hong Kong and Macau in 2013; the Best Independent Producer Award (Premio Raimondo Rezzonico) at the Locarno Film Festival in 2014; the Golden Mulberry Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Udine Far East Film Festival in 2015; the Special Achievement Award at the Marie Claire Asia Star Awards, which are part of the Busan International Film Festival, in 2015; and the Berlinale Camera Award (for Contribution to Film Industry) at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2017. She is actively involved in the work of various charities and public services, and she currently serves as an Honorary Consultant to HKBU's Academy of Film and the Vice Chairman of the End Child Sexual Abuse Foundation.
Professor Shu Chi-wang
Professor Shu Chi-wang, Theodore B Stowell University Professor of Applied Mathematics at Brown University in the USA, is a distinguished mathematician who has had a significant impact on scientific computing.
Professor Shu has published more than 430 impactful academic papers. He is the chief editor or co-chief editor of several prestigious academic journals in the fields of mathematics and computing, such as the Journal of Scientific Computing, Methods and Applications of Analysis, Annals of Mathematical Sciences and Applications and Communications on Applied Mathematics and Computation. He also serves as a member of the editorial boards of other top-tier journals including Mathematics of Computation and Journal of Computational Physics.
Professor Shu's prominent academic achievements have been recognised with several international awards, and he was presented with the SIAM John von Neumann Prize by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in 2021, SIAM/ACM Prize in Computational Science and Engineering by the SIAM and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 2007, and the Feng Kang Prize for Scientific Computing by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1995.
Ms Eileen Tsui Li, BBS, JP
Ms Eileen Tsui Li, Managing Director of Nankai Transport International (Hong Kong) Company Limited, is a successful entrepreneur, and she has worked in the cargo and logistics industry for over 30 years.
Under her leadership, Nankai Transport International has developed a comprehensive network of overseas branches, obtained an A-Grade International Forwarding Licence in Shanghai in 2004, and established itself as the first Japanese freight forwarding company to handle cargo logistics to and from mainland China and worldwide.
Ms Tsui has contributed significantly to education and social progress in Hong Kong and mainland China. She has been a member of the Standing Committee, Jilin Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, since 2002; a member of the Committee on Community Support for Rehabilitated Offenders of the Hong Kong Correctional Services since 2015; and the Vice President of the All-China Women's Federation Hong Kong Delegates Association Ltd since 2009. She was awarded the Bronze Bauhinia Star by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government. Over the years, she has donated on several occasions to various initiatives which have benefitted the community.
Mr Jaap van Zweden, SBS
Mr Jaap van Zweden is a world-renowned conductor. He is concurrently the Music Director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (HK Phil) and the New York Philharmonic.
Mr van Zweden was only 19 when he was appointed as the youngest-ever concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in the Netherlands. He began to focus more on conducting in the mid-1990s, and since then he has been a guest conductor with many leading orchestras around the world. He joined the HK Phil in 2012, and under his leadership, the maestro and his players received the prestigious Gramophone Orchestra of the Year Award in 2019 – the first orchestra in Asia to receive this distinction. He has also won other prestigious honours throughout his outstanding career, including the National Oskar Back Violin Competition in the Netherlands in 1977, the Edison Award for Best Opera Recording in 2012, and the Concertgebouw Prize in 2020. He was also named Conductor of the Year by Musical America in 2012, and was awarded the Silver Bauhinia Star by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government in 2020, in recognition of his significant contribution to the development of the HK Phil and classical music in Hong Kong.
In 1997, Mr van Zweden and his wife founded the Papageno Foundation to support the development of children and young adults with autism through various means and activities, including music therapy.
Ms Wu Man
Ms Wu Man is recognised as the world's premier pipa virtuoso and a leading ambassador of Chinese music.
Ms Wu has carved out a career as a soloist, educator and composer, and she has given the pipa, an ancient Chinese musical instrument, a new lease of life in traditional and contemporary music. She has performed throughout the USA, Europe and Asia, and recorded or appeared on more than 50 albums. Her exemplary achievements have been recognised with a number of honours and awards, and she was named a Bunting Fellow (Music Performance) of Harvard University in 1998-99, and a Fellow of the United States Artists in 2008. Ms Wu was also awarded the City of Toronto Glenn Gould Protégé Prize in 1999, and she was named Instrumentalist of the Year by the magazine Musical America in 2013.
Ms Wu strives to develop a place for the pipa in diverse art forms while spearheading multimedia projects to preserve and create awareness of China's ancient musical traditions. Her career has developed beyond pipa performances to encompass singing, dancing, composing and curating new works of art.
