Professor Che Chi-ming, chair professor at Hong Kong University, feels appreciated. 'I think this is the first time a foundation is looking after the scientists. Of course the RGC [Research Grants Council] supports projects, but usually the scientists are quite lonely.' He is one of four senior staff at Hong Kong institutions awarded a Croucher senior fellowship to drop their teaching duties and spend more time at their laboratory benches for a year.
Although he is grateful, Professor Che reckons a year will not be long enough. 'If it could be two years I think that would be very good - I could get most of the things I want to do, done. A year is a very short time - in other places usually a fellowship like this would be for five years,' he said.
'But it's a lot of money, and I have to thank the Croucher Foundation.' Under the scheme, the university gets about $700,000 to employ a teacher to take over the Croucher fellow's classes. Professor Che has in mind a researcher from the prestigious California institute Caltech, whom he hopes can come to teach and help with his research, which he sees as fitting in with the fellowship's aims.
Chair professor in engineering Brian Duggan is more sanguine. He says he doesn't want to lose all his undergraduate teaching, which he enjoys and regards as critical. 'The university doesn't produce [research] papers, it produces graduates,' he says.
As far as administration goes, he says some of the 30 or so committees on which he sits 'will need to be sensitive' and do without him.
Professor Che, Professor Duggan and the third Hong Kong University fellow, physics chair professor David Tong, are all crystallographers. Professor Tong rushed from the ceremony to a Japanese conference.
Professor Che has two aims for his research year: to build up a joint chemistry laboratory just set up with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and to focus on understanding molecular materials and producing new catalysts with the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry.
