New | City University secured funds to launch vet research

City University has secured financial support for veterinary research projects as it gears up for the opening of its vet school later this year, the university said on Tuesday.

This came a week after the University Grants Committee rejected the Kowloon Tong institution’s application to establish a publicly-funded vet school.

The university’s vice-president Professor Paul Lam Kwan-sing said on Tuesday the university would set aside a start-up cost of some HK$20 million this year for two research centres on animal welfare and mariculture for a postgraduate vet course.

The programme would specialise in four major research areas namely food safety, marine agriculture, animal welfare and zoonotic diseases, Lam said. He hoped the public would not only focus on its planned, publicly-funded undergraduate programme as it was only part of a wider vet school proposal.

For the research projects, the university has got an initial funding of at least several millions of Hong Kong dollars from partners.

One of the projects will be on animal kidney virus research and will be sponsored by an internationally-renowned pet food company. Another biomedical project will be sponsored by Guangzhou Pharmaceuticals Corporation.