Empowering Research Postgraduates: HKUMed’s Diverse Community and Varied Topics
With applications now open for HKUMed’s research postgraduate programmes, we spoke to Professor Jason Wong and his PhD student Sojung Lee to learn about how the Faculty supports students to achieve success.
Professor Wong’s research in the School of Biomedical Sciences focuses on cancer genomics, examining how mutations in the genome occur to discover why cancers develop and how to stop them.
A supervisor to multiple PhD and MPhil students, Professor Wong identified a series of advantages the Faculty can offer postgraduate students that range from top-notch facilities to collaboration with clinicians.
He pointed to the Faculty’s Centre for PanorOmic Studies for not both its state-of-the-art equipment and the valuable training it offers, such as bioinformatics workshops. To ensure a smooth research journey, students can also access high-performance computers and graphic processing units, Professor Wong said.
“In terms of computational biology, bioinformatics, we definitely have one of the bigger teams of academics,” he said. “In our school, we have 5 PIs (principal investigators) who do bioinformatics research and because of that… we can leverage more facilities.”
This concentration of top researchers at HKUMed gives students an advantage, Professor Wong said, as these groups are working at the forefront of their respective fields.
“If you do research, you want to be at the cutting edge and to get to work on problems that are the most important and the most relevant,” he said. “Ultimately, for career progression, you need to publish good papers, which of course good labs are more likely to do.”
Check out the research programmes available at the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong here.
Separately, the Faculty organises activities for each year of study to ensure students are progressing.
For first-year students, this takes the form of a progress report assessed by a group of professors, while in their second year, students take part in a poster presentation for the Research Postgraduate Symposium. In their third year, PhD students are given a chance to deliver a seminar at the Symposium.
HKUMed has a diverse student body as well as a huge range of research projects, Professor Wong added, with this variety resulting in a wealth of interdisciplinary collaborations.
“Because we’re in the Faculty of Medicine, we can do very close collaborations with the clinical departments,” he said, explaining that these links offer access to vital clinical samples.
Professor Wong’s team is unusual as it operates both a wet and dry lab, which he said reflects a growing trend in medical research as scientists increasingly require broader skill sets.
“Even if you’re a wet-lab biologist, it’s almost inevitable now in biomedical sciences that you have to do some dry lab work, some data analysis,” he said. “What’s different in my group is that our approach to research is we start with the data and then we do the wet lab.”
To ensure his team can excel in this environment, Professor Wong requires that potential students have an interest in cancer research and possess quantitative skills, or have the desire to develop coding skills.
Lee, who is in her fourth year of her PhD studying endogenous retro viruses and their effects on cancer, said the many resources available at HKUMed have helped her become more successful.
The South Korean scientist said she has benefitted from showcasing her work at the RPG Symposium and other events at HKUMed as these have provided valuable feedback on her research.
She has also made the most of generous grants offered by the University of Hong Kong to attend overseas conferences. These grants have allowed her to attend top conferences to meet leading scientists and even secure an exchange to the US for 2025.
“At the good conferences, you meet good people and make good connections,” she said. “For me, if I want to apply for a post-doc then it will always be good to have those connections so I can reach out.”
Take a look at the research projects that are currently available at HKUMed.
