The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) received generous bequests of HKD27,651,001.36 from Mr. YAO Ling Sun to set up two Yao Ling Sun professorships — one in architecture and one in surgery. 

CUHK has chosen from amongst its most distinguished faculty members and appointed Prof. NG Yan Yung Edward and Prof. LAU Yun Wong James to be the first incumbent of the Yao Ling Sun Professor of Architecture and Yao Ling Sun Professor of Surgery respectively. The interest generated from the endowment funds will provide an additional and stable source of annual funding to the incumbent professors' related research activities in perpetuity. 

	The gift will go a long way towards enhancing research in surgery at CUHK, thus contributing to the wellbeing of the people of Hong Kong and the wider world community.
	Prof. Joseph SUNG

Dr. James LAU joined the Department of Surgery at the Prince of Wales Hospital in 1991, first as a Medical Officer and then he advanced to the position of Senior Medical Officer and later Consultant in 1998.  In 2006, Dr. James LAU joined The Chinese University of Hong Kong and in the following year advanced to the position of Professor of Surgery.

As an accomplished general surgeon, Prof. James LAU has initiated and taken part in many valuable studies in collaboration with Prof. Joseph SUNG and the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology of the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics.  The quality and impact of his academic work were of world-class.  He has settled the controversy on whether open surgery or endoscopic therapy would be a better treatment for recurrent bleeding peptic ulcers.  He has also started the use of intravenous proton pump inhibitor for peptic ulcer bleeding, which is now a common practice around the world.  He has published three landmark papers in New England Journal of Medicine (2012 impact factor 51.658) as first author in 1999, 2000 and 2007 respectively and another three as co-author. Prof. James LAU has become widely cited and gained an exceptional international reputation in his field.

The guests tour around the Centre and appreciate the combined efforts of medicine and engineering professionals.

 

Dr. James LAU was appointed the Director of Endoscopy in Prince of Wales Hospital in 2003 in succession to Prof. Sydney CHUNG, the former Dean of Medicine.  The yearly-held International Endoscopy Symposium is extremely popular in the endoscopy community.  Surgeons and physicians working in the gastrointestinal tract from different countries regard the symposium as the "must attend" category and this symposium has put CUHK and Hong Kong in the world map of endoscopy.  Under his academic leadership, both the quality and quantity of research output from the centre has been outstanding, his contribution has been instrumental to the continuous success of the Department and the Endoscopy Centre.

In 2000, Dr. James LAU went to Edinburgh for further training in Vascular Surgery.  This decision was made in order to establish the service of vascular surgery at the Prince of Wales Hospital.  At that time, vascular surgery service was provided by general surgeons.  As a Hospital Authority consultant and a trained upper GI surgeon, Dr. LAU took up the job and successfully established a vascular surgery team at the Department of Surgery on his return to serve the public patients.  Currently, the Team is covering the service of the New Territories East Cluster and accepting referrals across the territory and the quality of the service is highly regarded in the community.  In recent years, endovascular treatment has become a possibility for patients who are too sick to undergo open surgery.  The vascular surgery service, under the leadership of Prof. James LAU, has been using their private fund to support some of the cost of the stents used on public patients.  He has also solicited financial support from charity organisations in the community to help support some of the programmes that are not funded by the Hospital Authority.  These initiatives are solid proof to demonstrate Prof. LAU’s determination to serve the public through his work as a surgeon in the public sector.

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