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Professor Herbert H P Fang of HKU was the co-recipient of the 2008 State Scientific and Technological Progress Award 2nd Level for the project ‘The Study and engineering application of a new biological technology for the removal of organic nitrogenous pollutants from wastewaters'.  

The HKU winners of the first-class award, Professor Benjamin Wong, Simon K Y Lee Professor in Gastroenterology, and Dr Jide Wong, Research Assistant Professor of the Department of Medicine, were glad to have played an important role in fighting against stomach cancer, one of the top cancers in China.

Their project was a collaboration between FMMU and HKU on prevention and early diagnosis of stomach cancer. The research group demonstrated effective primary prevention through treatment of the stomach bacteria called Helicobacter pylori, and also possible secondary prevention with aspirin and related drugs. FMMU has discovered markers for the early diagnosis of stomach cancer and the genes responsible for treatment failure.

Both Professor Wong and Dr Wang were very proud to receive the first-class award, the most prestigious award in science and technology in Mainland China. They said, "We treasure our long-term collaboration with doctors and scientists on the Mainland and hope to have even more interaction in the future."

The HKU co-recipient of the 2008 State Scientific and Technological Progress Award 2nd Level, Professor Herbert Fang, Chair of Environmental Engineering, was excited with this happy news and said, "I am glad that the technology developed for industrial pollution control at HKU's laboratories has been found to have useful applications in China."

The technology, developed by Professor Fang and his research partners from the South China University of Technology and the Ministry of Petrochemicals, is to design and control proper process conditions, such as dissolved oxygen level, hydraulic and sludge retention times, at various sections of the wastewater treatment system according to the complex characteristics of the wastewater.  By applying this novel environmental bio-technology, the toxic organic nitrogenous pollutants in these wastewaters in China were effectively converted first to nitrate by nitrifying bacteria and subsequently to harmless nitrogen gas by de-nitrification bacteria.

Professor Fang is the recipient of many research awards including the Senior Research Fellowship of Croucher Foundation, the University's Outstanding Researcher Award and Outstanding Research Student Supervisor Award.

Since 1989, a number of HKU scholars received national awards and prizes in recognition of their outstanding research work. In recent years, these have included the following:

• In 2008, Professor Ngaiming Mok, Chair of Mathematics, nominated by Mainland experts took a second-class award of the State Natural Science Award on the basis of his research programme ‘Complex geometry on symmetric and homogeneous spaces' one of the only two recipients of the State Natural Science Award in Mathematics that year in all of China;
• In 2007, Professor Che Chi-ming, Hui Wai Haan Chair of Chemistry, Department of Chemistry of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), received the First Class Prize of the State Natural Science Award (SNSA);
• In 2006, Professor Sheung-tat Fan, Chair Professor of the Department of Surgery and Sun Chieh Yeh Chair of Hepatobiliary Surgery, and his liver transplant team, comprising Professor Chung-mau Lo, Chin Lan-Hong Professorship in Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, Dr Chi-Leung Liu, and Dr See-ching Chan, won the first-class SSTA award, the first time an entry from Hong Kong took top honours. On the same occasion, Professor Vivian Wing-Wah Yam, Chair Professor of the Department of Chemistry, was honoured with the second-class award for the category of State Natural Science Award (SNSA).