HKU Named Research Centres, Endowed Professionships and Academic Honours

The University of Hong Kong (HKU) Comprehensive Information Database · 04 Research Module This article surveys HKU's Endowed Professorships, named research centres and buildings, and academic honours such as honorary degrees and honorary university fellowships. Named donors and recipients of academic honours are recorded by name in accordance with this archive's conventions (sections 00–12, neutral factual zone); proper names of institutions, professorships and buildings are retained.

# 1. Endowed Professorships

# 1.1 The scheme

According to HKU Academic Development's "Endowed Professorships" page^※, an endowed professorship is one of the highest honours the University confers on its distinguished scholars, supporting their scholarship and research. The scheme was launched in 2005 with an initial batch of 8 endowed professorships, regarded as a milestone in the University's history; according to the same page, 120 endowed professorships have been established to date.

Endowed professorships are usually named after the donor or a person designated in their memory, and typically operate on a donation + matching basis to form a permanent fund. For example, according to an HKU Giving report^※, the Tam Wah-Ching Professorship in Medical Science was established in October 2008 from a HK$10 million donation by Dr. Tam Wah-ching, matched by the University to form a HK$20 million permanent fund.

# 1.2 Selected endowed professorships

The table below lists representative named/endowed professorships at HKU, drawn from the HKU endowed professorships list^※ and individual professorship pages:

Professorship naming spans faculties and specialties. According to the HKU endowed professorships list^※, further examples include: the Cheng Yu-Tung Professorship in Finance, the Cheng Chan Lan Yue Professorship in Constitutional Law, the Chan To-Haan Professorship in Urban Planning and Design, the Andrew K F Lee Professorship in Architecture Design, the Anthony and Anne Cheung Professorship in Innovative and Minimally Invasive Surgery, the Ada M F Chan Professorship in Oncological Pathology, and the Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Charity Foundation Professorship in Nursing. Names usually relate to the donor or their designated honouree and span finance, law, architecture, surgery, nursing, pathology and other disciplines, reflecting the wide coverage of HKU's endowed professorships.

Note: current and former holders of individual chairs change with appointments. This archive records only the naming and donation of the chair itself; the scholars currently in post should be checked against the HKU Calendar and individual faculty pages (see HKU Calendar — Named Professorships^※). Historical/deceased scholars and donors are recorded by name as a matter of fact; living scholars are named only in neutral or positive academic contexts.

# 1.3 The 14th inauguration of endowed professorships (9 January 2026) and Outstanding Young Professorships

According to an AppliedHE Xtra report^※, HKU held the 14th inauguration of endowed professorships on 9 January 2026, establishing 6 new endowed professorships and 4 Outstanding Young Professorships in one ceremony, with a further 12 existing chairs confirmed for renewal. As of that ceremony, HKU had established more than 130 endowed professorships cumulatively — a more than fifteen-fold increase from the initial 8 in 2005.

The Outstanding Young Professorships are a sub-category of the endowed professorship scheme aimed at early- and mid-career scholars. The naming mechanism is identical to that of endowed professorships (donors are named), but recipients are more junior, allowing the University to recognise and fund exceptional scholars before they reach senior chairs. According to the same report, the research directions of that year's four Outstanding Young Professorship recipients spanned interdisciplinary topics including sleep-health effects, accessibility of legal systems, and AI-driven analysis of classroom dialogue; the chairs were named for donors including Belinda Hung, Gallant Ho and the Tin Ka Ping Foundation.

The new chairs in that year also illustrated a pattern of the same donor endowing multiple chairs across faculties: according to the same report, Dr. Zhang Yonghong alone funded several chairs at the HKU Business School, while the David H Y Chang Professorship in Chinese History was endowed by the Tigillus Foundation, with Professor Guoqi Xu appointed as its first holder for his work advancing transnational history. This pattern of one donor endowing chairs across multiple departments echoes the earlier Zimmern/Kotewall family model, reflecting how endowed professorship giving at HKU has evolved from "a single donation matched to a single chair" towards "one donor or foundation sustaining a long-term presence across many faculties".

# 2. Named research centres and buildings

HKU has a large number of research centres, buildings and facilities named after donors or memorialised figures. Key examples (drawn from official pages) include:

• The Hong Kong Jockey Club Building for Interdisciplinary Research (香港賽馬會跨學科研究大樓): located on the Sassoon Road campus; according to the State Key Laboratory of Synthetic Chemistry's page^※, it houses the Department of Chemistry, the State Key Laboratory of Synthetic Chemistry, and other interdisciplinary research facilities — a representative example of Jockey Club-named support for HKU's research infrastructure.
• Laboratory for Synthetic Chemistry and Chemical Biology (合成化學及化學生生物學實驗室): one of the InnoHK (Health@InnoHK) centres led by HKU (see institutes-and-labs.md).
• Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine (李嘉誠醫學院): named in 2005 after a donation from the Li Ka Shing Foundation (see ../11-medical-hospital/ and ../01-academics/).
• The Centennial Campus (百周年校園) and named faculty buildings: for campus buildings and facilities, see ../05-campus/.

The Main Campus itself is effectively an assemblage of named buildings. According to an HKU campus map published by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre^※, the Main Campus and adjacent faculty buildings alone include the Run Run Shaw Building (邵逸夫樓), the Chow Yei Ching Building (周亦卿樓) and the Haking Wong Building (黃克競樓) — all three named after their donors and used by different faculties. Such named buildings are found across all HKU campuses (Main Campus, Queen Mary Hospital, Sham Shui Po, Taikoo Shing). Unlike endowed professorships, however, a building name usually reflects a one-off construction donation and carries no ongoing commitment to fund a particular academic field within the building; endowed professorships and named research centres, by contrast, typically come with long-term operating or research funds. The two naming mechanisms both put the donor's name on something, but their funding structures and durability differ, so this archive records them separately so readers do not conflate "donating a building" with "endowing a research fund".

Residential halls deserve a passing mention too: according to public records, Li Shau Kee Hall (李兆基堂), part of the Jockey Club Second Residential Village at 109 Pokfulam Road, opened in 2005 with the rest of that hall complex — another instance of a Hong Kong property and finance figure lending their name to HKU facilities. A full list of named halls with years is given in ../05-campus/; this article will not repeat it.

# 3. Honorary Degrees

HKU confers honorary degrees on individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the University and to society. According to the HKU Honorary Graduates page^※, degrees are conferred at Congregation ceremonies. For example, at the 216th Congregation on 26 November 2025, HKU conferred honorary degrees on three distinguished individuals: Professor Gang Chen, Professor Arthur Li and Dr. Patrick Poon Sun-cheong, according to a Keynotes@HKU report^※.

# 3.1 Five types of honorary degrees

According to the Honorary Graduates page "Honorary Degrees: The University's Premier Tribute"^※, the honorary degree is the highest honour HKU can confer and one of its oldest and most cherished traditions, granted to distinguished individuals who have made significant contributions to the world, to humanity, to academia, to Hong Kong, or to the University. The page lists five honorary degrees: Doctor of Laws (LLD), Doctor of Letters (LittD), Doctor of Science (DSc), Doctor of Divinity (DD) and Doctor of Social Sciences (DSocSc), awarded according to the field of the recipient's contributions.

# 3.2 Notable honorary graduates across the years

According to the official HKU Honorary Graduates page^※ and individual recipient pages, notable honorary graduates include:

Note: apart from Mandela and Ma, for whom specific congregations/years could be verified and are cited in the table above, this archive relies on the official HKU Honorary Graduates page^※ for the list of historical honorary graduates and has not verified individual years one by one, to avoid misattributing dates; those wanting exact congregations can consult each recipient's personal page (formatted as in the two examples above). HKU has conferred honorary degrees on many notable figures over its history; the official page is the definitive list of names and years. This archive records only the mechanism and recent examples, and does not enumerate every congregation.

# 4. Honorary University Fellowships

According to public reports, HKU's Honorary University Fellowships scheme was established in 1995 to honour individuals who have made significant contributions to the University, to academia, and to Hong Kong. According to an HKU press release^※, roughly 167 honorary fellowships had been conferred cumulatively as of around 2022 (the cumulative figure is updated annually). Honorary fellowships differ from honorary degrees: the former emphasise service to and contributions to the University community, while the latter recognise academic or social achievement.

# 4.1 The 2025/2026 presentation ceremony

According to an HKU press release (June 2026)^※, the ceremony for the "2025" Honorary University Fellowships was actually held on Wednesday 17 June 2026 in Loke Yew Hall (陸佑堂) in the Main Building, presided over by the Pro-Chancellor, Sir Li Kwok-po, who conferred the title of Honorary University Fellow on six individuals: Dr. Chan Wai-man, Professor Lee Sum-ping, Mr. Charles Li Xiaojia, Professor Man Wai-fun, Professor Ir. Poon Wai-yin, and Ms. Yu Lai Mei-sin. As of that ceremony, HKU had conferred the title of Honorary University Fellow on 179 distinguished individuals cumulatively. The same release notes that Dr. Chan Wai-man had been unable to attend the original 2023 ceremony, so his investiture was postponed and carried out at the 2026 ceremony in arrears — an illustration of the administrative convention whereby such honours are "resolved first, conferred later at a chosen date".

Note: the definitive list of Honorary University Fellows and Honorary Graduates by year is the official HKU page (Honorary University Fellowships^※). This archive does not enumerate each year, to avoid the list going stale.

# 5. Summary and gaps

• Well-sourced: the endowed professorship scheme (launched 2005; over 130 established cumulatively as of the 14th inauguration in January 2026; the matching mechanism; the Outstanding Young Professorships sub-category), several representative chairs, named research buildings and halls, honorary degrees (including the five degree types in section 3.1 and notable recipients in 3.2), and the Honorary University Fellowships mechanism with the recent 2025/2026 example (179 cumulatively) — all supported by official HKU pages or press releases.
• Handled with care: current holders of chairs change with appointments, so only the naming of the chair itself is recorded; cumulative counts of honorary degrees/fellowships change annually and are given only in general terms; of the historical honorary graduates, only Mandela and Ma had their specific congregations verified, and the rest are recorded by name from the official list without guessing at years.
• Not found / left to other articles: the full item-by-item list of the 130+ endowed professorships and their current holders is not transcribed here (see the official HKU endowed professorships list^※); the complete catalogue of named buildings and halls is in ../05-campus/; details of the medical faculty's naming are in ../11-medical-hospital/; strategic research structures such as State Key Laboratories and InnoHK centres (a separate approval/funding system distinct from the named buildings and chairs discussed here) are covered in institutes-and-labs.md; and HKU's overall research output, patents and spin-off companies are covered in output-and-startups.md.

# Further reading

• HKU research institutes: State Key Laboratories, InnoHK centres and strategic research structures — for the distinction between the "named" and "research unit" systems
• HKU research achievements and output — representative research achievements of endowed professorship holders
• HKU named pathogens research — representative research directions of named professorship holders in microbiology, such as Professor Yuen Kwok-yung
• Details of the HKU medical faculty and named medical chairs: ../11-medical-hospital/
• Details of the HKU campus and named buildings/halls: ../05-campus/