Global Networks Collaboration is not only encouraged within the University. Our scholars work closely with their counterparts around the world. These global networks are critical for advancing research to benefit patients, as our work during the COVID-19 pandemic showed. Our success there recently brought us a major reward in the form of a large donation to strengthen preparation for the next pandemic. Last month, we signed an MoU with The Hong Kong Jockey Club that provides us with a special donation to establish The Hong Kong Jockey Club Global Health Institute that headquarters at HKUMed. We will be collaborating with the University of Cambridge and the International Vaccine Institute to centralise and co-ordinate pandemic preparedness at the academic and industrial levels; to translate research into practical preventative interventions such as vaccines; and to advance the equitable access and affordability of these interventions and technologies. At the same time, Professor Yuen Kwok-Yung has teamed up with Professor David Ho of Columbia University, who has worked with HKUMed for many years, to create a global Pandemic Research Alliance. They are building on the legacy of Hong Kong and HKU in dealing with pandemics and infectious diseases over more than a century and they have brought in partners including the University of Melbourne, Duke-Singapore National University, Tsinghua University and Guangzhou National Laboratory. These initiatives come alongside our ongoing collaborations. In just the past three months, we held a symposium with the Francis Crick Institute on infection, immunity, stem cell, cancer research and emerging biomedical technologies, and a joint symposium with the University of Cambridge on the future of medical sciences that also celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Department of Medicine. The Master of Trinity College at Cambridge, Professor Dame Sally Davies, spoke in October at the Inaugural Gabriel Leung Lecture. And the School of Chinese Medicine marked its 25th anniversary with the 12th Pong Ding Yuen International Symposium on Chinese Medicine, which looked at the globalisation of Chinese medicine and integrative medicine and attracted participants from the region, Europe, North America and Australia. 13 THE DEAN’S LETTER
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