Every year, the University of Macau (UM) confers honorary doctorates on distinguished individuals with outstanding achievements and significant contributions to social development and education. This year, three Nobel Prize winners, namely Prof Robert C Merton, Prof Chen-Ning Franklin Yang, and Prof Mo Yan, as well as two distinguished individuals in the field of civil engineering, namely Prof Lee Chack Fan and Ir Siu Yin Wai, will receive honorary doctorates from UM.

 

The conferment ceremony will be held in UM’s University Hall at 11:00am on Saturday 6 December. Prof Lee Chack Fan and Ir Siu Yin Wai will receive the Degree of Doctor of Science honoris causa. Prof Robert C Merton will receive the Degree of Doctor of Business Administration honoris causa. Prof Mo Yan will receive the Degree of Doctor of Letters honoris causa. The ceremony for conferring the Degree of Doctor of Science honoris causa upon Prof Chen-Ning Franklin Yang will be held separately.

 

Prof Lee Chack Fan is an honorary professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and an expert on geotechnical and hydraulic engineering. He has made significant contributions to the construction of nuclear power plants, dams, and infrastructure facilities in mainland China, including the famous Three Gorges Project and the Ertan Dam. In the early 1980s, Lee volunteered as a senior consultant to the Ministry of Water Resources and Electric Power of China. Thus trudging amid the hostile terrains of China, he began his long years of undertakings to serve his country in many of its hydraulic projects. He has taught at HKU for over 20 years, during which he strove for its research excellence and forged cooperation with the academia in mainland China. He is also actively involved in the promotion of culture and community service and is the author of a number of best-selling self-help books.

 

Prof Robert C Merton is an American economist and a Nobel laureate in economics in 1997. He is currently a distinguished professor of finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Sloan School of Management and a professor emeritus of Harvard University. He is also resident scientist at Dimensional Fund Advisors, where he developed a next-generation integrated pension-management solution system that addressed deficiencies associated with traditional defined-benefit and defined-contribution plans. Prof Merton is noted for putting finance theories into practice and has re-shaped the world of finance and economics with his Option Pricing Theory.

 

Prof Mo Yan is the first Chinese citizen to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He played an important role in inducting contemporary Chinese literature in the world’s literary Hall of Fame. In the mid-1980s, Mo became noted for having written a corpus of in-search-of-roots works with infusions of the raw rural culture. His 1986 novel Red Sorghum Clan was the first neo-historical novel in modern Chinese Literature. In 2012, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his ability to merge “hallucinatory realism” with “folk tales, history and the contemporary” in his work. He has published more than 80 short stories, 30 novellas, 11 novels, 9 scripts for TV dramas and films, 2 plays, as well as 5 essay collections which were later re-published in three complete volumes.

 

Ir Siu Yin Wai is a native of Macao and has been a practicing engineer for over 30 years. He obtained engineering qualifications from different places and has written many influential papers on engineering. At the beginning of 1980, Siu set up his firm in Hong Kong. With his talents and diligence, he has become a top engineer in the Greater China region. Ir Siu was commissioned for many famed projects of luxurious estates and commercial centres and has received the Structural Excellence Award from the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers and the Institution of Structural Engineers for a hotel construction project in Macao. Apart from the above accomplishments, Ir Siu has always concerned himself with education and performed many philanthropic deeds, including the establishment of scholarships and donations to various institutions.

 

Prof Chen-Ning Franklin Yang received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957 jointly with his research partner for their work in disproving the “parity laws”, which were taken as the golden rules by physicists at that time. He and his partner were the first two Chinese to win the Nobel Prize. His Yang-Mills theory is another achievement of great significance. The theory is considered one of the greatest theories of modern physics in the 20th century. Prof Yang has been elected a fellow of national science academies in many countries. He has won numerous awards and has made significant contributions to China’s development in the various aspects of science education.

 

 

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