Dr Youhua TAN and Dr Chunyi WEN received the Faculty of Engineering (FENG) Research Grant Achievement Award for 2020

We are proud to announce that our Professors, Dr. Chunyi Wen & Dr. Youhua Tan received the Faculty of Engineering (FENG) Research Grant Achievement Award for 2020 in recognition of their great efforts and contributions in securing external competitive research grants. All of them have led and participated in a number of multidisciplinary research projects in recent years.

We have conducted an interview to let you know more about their achievements and research. 

Dr. Chunyi Wen

“During the tough period in COVID-19, you should never give up pursuing your dream in science advances and technical innovations. Now we can see the light at the other end of the tunnel to get through this pandemic. Meanwhile, we shall prepare and equip ourselves with knowledge and capability to battle for the next disaster and pandemic in near future.”

Dr. Chunyi Wen

Associate professor

Department of Biomedical Engineering

Q: Dr. Wen, congratulations on your achievements in the research field and outstanding performance in securing research grants. Could you tell us your feelings about applying for these funds, is it tough?

A: The research grant application is highly competitive in Hong Kong. We are so lucky to receive the support from RGC, HMRF and ITF. It is our honor but also our responsibility to deliver what we have proposed.

Q: To let our students know more about your research field, could you please briefly introduce the research areas of your group?

A: We are targeting the ageing and age-related diseases as a whole, and we chose osteoarthritis as a point of breakthrough because it occurs at the early stage of ageing and link with many other age-related diseases in late life. It might provide us a new insight to understand ageing process.

Q: Could you simply share something with us that made you so interested in osteoarthritic?

A: My research centers are about ageing and age-related diseases, particularly skeletal ageing including osteoarthritis and osteoporosis. What I and my team are interested in is not a single disease, osteoarthritis. We deploy cutting-edge technologies including human organoid, single-cell sequencing, live-cell imaging empowered by machine learning-empowered computing vision to probe and map ageing process, at its onset and its early stage.

Q: You are also doing research related to COVID-19, what is your view on the current fifth wave of COVID-19?

A: Our knowledge about COVID-19 is growing and our arsenal combating SARS-Cov-2 is enriching including vaccine and anti-virus drugs. Also, there is a growing body of interest in how to mitigate the severe cases of COVID-19. We are working on this direction together with the HKU microbiology team. Also, we are paying attention to long COVID symptoms affecting bone and joint. 

Q: Finally, do you have any advice or guidance for our students?

A: During the tough period in COVID, we should never give up pursuing our dream in science advances and technical innovations. Now we can see the light at the other end of the tunnel to get through this pandemic. Meanwhile, we shall prepare and equip ourselves with knowledge and capability to battle for the next disaster and pandemic in near future.

Dr. Youhua Tan

“I hope that all of our BME students have an inclusive mindset so that they can look at the same problem from different perspectives, such as, studying a disease from the engineering point of view. This could be one unique advantage of our BME students over others. I also wish all BME students to be healthy and optimistic during the current pandemic.”

Dr. Youhua Tan

Associate professor

Programme Coordinator (MSc in BME)

Department of Biomedical Engineering

Q: Dr. Tan, firstly, congratulations on your achievements in the research field and securing external competitive research grants. Do you have any unforgettable things in applying for the grants?

A: To push the boundary of the relevant research field, all researchers are required to propose new ideas/hypotheses and explore new things, which need financial support from the funding bodies. The application of research grants in Hong Kong is always competitive, therefore we need to keep trying to apply for new research grants. So far, we have received support from RGC, NSFC, HMRF, and Shenzhen Government.

Q: Could you please briefly introduce the research topics of your group?

A: My research group mainly focuses on investigating the roles of mechanics in tumor metastasis, including tumor cell mechanics and malignancy, mechanically heterogeneous tumor tissue and preferential metastasis, and tumor cell stiffness for mechanotargeting. Recent advance in the mechanobiology tools has been utilized to tackle these key problems, such as atomic force microscope, tumor organoid, traction force microscope, ultrasound elastography, etc.

Q: As you are the expert in mechanobiology and tumors, are you interested in studying sars-cov-2?

A: Recent evidence has shown the involvement and significance of mechanics in various diseases, including cancer, aging, malaria, etc. We believe that mechanical force may also play important role in COVID. We are interested in this currently prevalent disease but have not started to investigate it yet.

Q: This year (2022) will be the 10th anniversary of BME. As programme coordinator (MSc in BME), could you tell us about your expectations for the future development of BME, and some good points of our MSc programme?

A: Since the nature of BME is multidisciplinary, I expect that more and more new fields and directions will emerge by combining engineering and other disciplines, especially those related to healthcare. To keep up with the pace of the new development, we have recently proposed two new specialisms into our MSc programme: Rehabilitation Engineering and Digital Health, which are pending for approval by the University. We believe the addition of these new specialisms will push the further development of our MSc programme and the department.

Q: Finally, do you have any advices or guidances for our students?

A: I hope that all of our BME students have an inclusive mindset so that they can look at the same problem from different perspectives, such as, studying a disease from the engineering point of view. This could be one unique advantage of our BME students over others. I also wish all BME students to be healthy and optimistic during the current pandemic.

Credit to: Jun LIU (Postgraduate in Biomedical Engineering)