Albert Sun-Chi Chan (; born 30 October 1950) is a

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

chemist. He is a professor of chemistry and

traditional Chinese medicine Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an alternative medical practice drawn from traditional medicine in China. It has been described as "fraught with pseudoscience", with the majority of its treatments having no logical mechanism of action ...

. He has served as a vice-president of the

Hong Kong Polytechnic University The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) is a public research university located in Hung Hom, Hong Kong near Hung Hom station. The University is one of the eight government-funded degree-granting tertiary institutions in Hong Kong. Founded ...

(PolyU) and the president of

Hong Kong Baptist University Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) is a publicly funded tertiary liberal arts education, liberal arts institution with a Christian ethics, Christian education heritage. It was established as Hong Kong Baptist College with the support of Ame ...

(HKBU).

Career

Chan began his professional career in chemistry in 1979 at

Monsanto The Monsanto Company () was an American agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation founded in 1901 and headquartered in Creve Coeur, Missouri. Monsanto's best known product is Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide, developed in th ...

in the United States. He moved back to Asia in 1992 to serve as a visiting expert at

National Taiwan University National Taiwan University (NTU; ) is a public research university in Taipei, Taiwan. The university was founded in 1928 during Japanese rule as the seventh of the Imperial Universities. It was named Taihoku Imperial University and served d ...

, and then returned to Hong Kong in 1994 to take up the position of chairman of PolyU's Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Engineering. While teaching at PolyU, he also pursued academic interests in

mainland China "Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...

, becoming the first dean of

Sun Yat-sen University Sun Yat-sen University (, abbreviated SYSU and colloquially known in Chinese as Zhongda), also known as Zhongshan University, is a national key public research university located in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China. It was founded in 1924 by and nam ...

's School of Pharmaceutical Sciences and later the first director of the State Key Laboratory of Medicine and Molecular Pharmacology in

Shenzhen Shenzhen (; ; ; ), also historically known as Sham Chun, is a major sub-provincial city and one of the special economic zones of China. The city is located on the east bank of the Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern province ...

. He was named a fellow of the

Chinese Academy of Sciences The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); ), known by Academia Sinica in English until the 1980s, is the national academy of the People's Republic of China for natural sciences. It has historical origins in the Academia Sinica during the Republ ...

in 2001. He held his PolyU departmental chairmanship until 2007, when he became the dean of the university's Faculty of Applied Science and Textiles and the Vice-President for Research and Development. In 2009, Chan was named as the president of

for a five-year term to begin in July 2010. His selection as university president drew criticisms from faculty and students for the opacity of the selection process. Search committee chairman Wilfred Wong Ying-wai stated that Chan was clearly the best candidate among the six who had been short-listed, and defended the committee's decision not to involve students in the selection process. Chan's goals for his term as president included improving HKBU to become one of the world's top 200 universities and developing the university's traditional Chinese medicine research capabilities. In 2013, he became involved in a high-profile dispute with the Town Planning Board over the zoning of land near the university; HKBU had made plans as early as 2009 to use the land to build a traditional Chinese medicine

teaching hospital A teaching hospital is a hospital or medical centre that provides medical education and training to future and current health professionals. Teaching hospitals are almost always affiliated with one or more universities and are often co-located ...

, while the government hoped to sell the land to real estate developers to build high-end flats. Chan threatened to resign from his post to protest the government's decision.

Personal life

Chan was born in

Taishan __NOTOC__ Taishan may refer to: *Mount Tai or Taishan (), Shandong, China *Taishan District, Tai'an (), named after the Mount Tai, a district in Tai'an, Shandong, China *Taishan, Guangdong (), a county-level city of Jiangmen, Guangdong, China **Gre ...

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

. He moved to Hong Kong at the age of 14, where he worked hard at memorising English vocabulary in order to catch up with other students and eventually achieved excellent academic results, earning him a scholarship to pursue higher education in Japan. There, he enrolled in

International Christian University is a non-denominational private university located in Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan, commonly known as ICU. With the efforts of Prince Takamatsu, General Douglas MacArthur, and BOJ President Hisato Ichimada, ICU was established in 1949 as the first ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

, where he earned a B.S. in Chemistry in 1975. He then went on to the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

, where he defended a doctoral thesis on

asymmetric hydrogenation Asymmetric hydrogenation is a chemical reaction that adds two atoms of Hydrogen atom, hydrogen to a target (substrate) molecule with three-dimensional Enantioselective synthesis, spatial selectivity. Critically, this selectivity does not come from ...

in 1979. While living in the USA, he naturalised as a citizen; he later renounced U.S. citizenship in 2001 after being named an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was named a

Justice of the Peace A justice of the peace (JP) is a judicial officer of a lower or ''puisne'' court, elected or appointed by means of a commission ( letters patent) to keep the peace. In past centuries the term commissioner of the peace was often used with the sa ...

of Hong Kong on 30 June 2012.

Selected works

* * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chan, Albert Sun-Chi 1950 births Living people American emigrants to Hong Kong Heads of universities in Hong Kong Academic staff of Hong Kong Baptist University Hong Kong emigrants to the United States Academic staff of Hong Kong Polytechnic University International Christian University alumni Members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences People from Taishan, Guangdong People with acquired American citizenship People with acquired permanent residency of Hong Kong People who renounced United States citizenship University of Chicago alumni