V23I1 Special

3 take a long term view as the Norman Ko sculpture at the steps of the University’s East Gate reminds us — 十年樹木，百年樹 人— that in education we must plan for the next century. President Xi Jinping in a landmark address last August set out the country’s vision in health and health care. The State Council followed with the publication of Healthy China 2030 , a national blueprint of population health development. In parallel, China has recently embarked on the ambitious “Belt and Road” geopolitical initiative that will define the coming era of global development. Yesterday therefore we held a summit of global health leaders, many of whom have joined the platform procession this afternoon, to kickstart a dialogue on what all this may mean for health sciences education, research and innovation in biomedicine, the dissemination and application of cutting-edge technologies at the bedside and in patients’ homes in this region where one-fifth of humanity lives and beyond. This will very much frame much of what we will do in future and provide the basis for a series of impactful multilateral collaborations. As 《大學》 or The Great Learning , one of the Confucian classics from which the University took its motto, emphasises, to be truly effective on the national or global stage, one must first put affairs of self and at home in good order, that is 修身、齊家 . We have begun to mend and expand our home on Sassoon Road, extending to the clinical campus of the Hong Kong West Cluster jointly with the Hospital Authority, and across the border at our mainland base. In 2014, the School of Public Health’s erstwhile disparately located offices reunited in the refurbished Patrick Manson Building (South Wing) at 7 Sassoon Road, in a fitting tribute to Sir Patrick’s memory as our founding dean and public health icon. The South Wing of the Patrick Manson complex has become an extension of the Madam SH Ho Residence for Medical Students, adding 124 places or 43% more capacity to the housing stock for students in their clinical years. Across the road at 8 Sassoon Road, construction works are about to begin on the Laboratory Animal Unit capital works upgrade. When the project is completed by the end of 2020, it will provide an additional 730m 2 or one-third more net operating floor area for the only AAALAC 1 -accredited facility in southern China. Two major new buildings have recently been approved to be constructed on Tang Court at 21 Sassoon Road and on the old laundry site at 3 Sassoon Road, both hopefully to be completed by 2021. The former project will see the addition of 2,800m 2 of conference facilities and administrative offices consolidated in the new three-storey Annex. The winning design comes from Wong and Ouyang, whose principal is a distinguished Architecture alumnus previously responsible for the acclaimed Centennial Campus Project. As a consequence, the entire William Mong Block will be refurbished and reserved for student learning and amenities, housing amongst others the Bau Institute for Medical and Health Sciences Education and the Learning Commons @Medicine. No. 3 Sassoon Road will provide a new permanent home for the School of Nursing as well as expanded quarters pro tem for the School of Chinese Medicine, together accounting for over 10,000m 2 of net floor area in the nine-storey building that will be connected by footbridges with Queen Mary Hospital across Pokfulam Road, student residences at 6 Sassoon Road and the Jockey Club Building for Interdisciplinary Research on 5 Sassoon Road. We have invested and attracted external funding totalling some HKD1.5 billion for these Sassoon Road capital projects. We have also been making parallel expansion plans at our teaching hospitals. Our pathology and microbiology departments are currently moving into newly refurbished laboratories, including a state-of-the-science biosafety level 3 facility, at the converted Block T of Queen Mary Hospital. Before these laboratory-based clinical departments find a purpose- built home in phase 2 of the Queen Mary redevelopment after 2024, the present premises provide over 2,100m 2 more operating space than the University Pathology Building which will be demolished to make way for phase 1 clinical expansion and reprovisioning. Next, in tandem with the redevelopment of Grantham Hospital into Hong Kong’s first academic cancer centre by 2024, we were awarded the University’s largest single donation to date by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust of HKD1.24 billion. Together with government’s co-investment altogether totalling almost HKD3.8 billion, we will be building and fitting out a new translational research block of about 15,000m 2 at Grantham 1 Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International