1975) who carried out the first open lung biopsy despite grave personal risks, Dr Elaine Gwi who arranged for the sample to be shared, and Professor John Chan (Medic 1981) who provided corroborating evidence by electron microscopy. During the course of this academic year, we will be bidding farewell to two distinguished colleagues. Professor Paul Tam, former acting Vice Chancellor, interim Provost, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Vice President (Research) and Associate Dean (Research) will be retiring from HKU and joining the Macau University of Science and Technology, working alongside its President Professor Joseph Lee who was HKU’s Pro Vice-Chancellor for staffing, or in today’s nomenclature academic development. I am glad though that he will be continuing his research at the University, not least in the Themebased Research Scheme programme headed by Dr Vincent Lui, his protégé. Without Paul, there would have been no TRS, full stop. Professor Keiji Fukuda, Director of the School of Public Health, who was first introduced to Hong Kong during the 1997 avian influenza outbreak as part of the US CDC delegation will be retiring to Atlanta, home of the CDC, completing the full circle of the past quarter century. Keiji has long been a personal friend and global health collaborator, through SARS, MERS, the 2009 swine flu pandemic and of course the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. I still remember well the many conversations I and others had had with Keiji, persuading him to come to HKUMed. These took several years spanning different continents, from Geneva to Atlanta to Doha, before two important women would support his move – Holly his dear dear wife and Dr Margaret Chan, former DirectorGeneral of the World Health Organization and his former boss. I thank them both for having supported Keiji and HKU throughout these years of his service to the University and wish him and Holly well. Success at succession The retirement of senior leaders reminds us of the vital importance of ongoing leadership renewal. It is a perennial goal of any successful organisation, not least in a university faculty. Sometimes it feels Sisyphean, especially when there is disequilibrium between attrition and availability. The 2019 social unrest and its aftermath coupled with COVID-19, against a longrunning background of the peculiarities of the local medical labour market have together made for a less than optimistic pool of appropriately qualified and interested leadership candidates in many fields. Despite these odds, I am delighted to have welcomed during the past year Professors Wing Leung and Chris Leung who respectively lead Paediatrics and Ophthalmology. Wing has enjoyed a distinguished career at the world-renown St Jude’s Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee and the National University of Singapore before joining HKUMed. Chris comes to us from across the Lion Rock and is without doubt a leading clinician cum translational visual scientist in Asia. We will soon welcome a brilliant radiologist who formerly headed a major US department at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He was chosen as a recipient of the highly selective government Global STEM professorship. I am sure he will be taking our Department of Diagnostic Radiology to new heights. Closer to home, I have recently appointed four younger colleagues to the headships of Microbiology, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Orthopaedics and Traumatology, and Psychiatry. They are a new generation of HKUMed leaders who will bring fresh thinking and youthful energy to the many challenges and tasks ahead. Leading by listening The original Silicon Valley firm, HewlettPackard, pioneered the management 7 The 205th Congregation
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