Background
The Medical Faculty of The University of Hong Kong is the oldest faculty in tertiary education in Hong Kong. Its origins go back to 1887, when the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese was founded by the London Missionary Society. Besides training doctors and nurses, the Faculty has always been at the forefront of medical research and development of new clinical services for the benefit of humankind.
Research Activities
The Medical Faculty is the largest faculty in the University with more than 310 full-time teaching staff members, 245 research staff and 677 research postgraduate students. The Faculty comprises 14 Departments and 4 Schools. Academic staff members in the Faculty undertake a wide spectrum of research, ranging from studies in frontier basic medical science to cutting-edge clinical research. The research themes in which they are actively participating include the following:
- Ageing
- Biomedical Engineering and Nanotechnology
- Cancer
- Development and Reproduction
- Drug
- Food
- Genomics
- Infection and Immunology
- Integrative Biology
- Neuroscience
- Public Health
- Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine
The Faculty receives substantial financial support for research activities from various sources in different forms, including research grants, conference grants, and fellowships offered by the Government and other funding agencies, as well as donations made by professional and industrial bodies and individual benefactors.
Research Postgraduate Programmes
The Faculty shares with other Faculties in the University the common goal of imparting knowledge to students through research. Every department in this Faculty therefore actively participates in the training of research postgraduate students for the MPhil and PhD degrees. While pre-clinical departments conduct and supervise research mainly in laboratories, clinical departments conduct and supervise research both in laboratories and in clinical settings. Research postgraduate students of the Faculty enjoy the benefits of working in state-of-the-art laboratories and technologically advanced core facilities.
The Faculty attracts high calibre candidates to enrol in its research postgraduate programmes. The programmes are popular among graduates in medicine and other healthcare professions, as well as graduates in biological, biomedical, and health sciences. Graduates in physical sciences, engineering, computer sciences, and social sciences are also welcome to apply.
Research postgraduate students of the Faculty are encouraged to conduct exchange at renowned overseas institutions as part of their research studies to establish collaborative links and to widen their exposure.
