Donor
Tai Hung Fai Charitable Foundation
Founded in 2005, the Tai Hung Fai Charitable Foundation is committed to helping disadvantaged elderly and underprivileged children throughout Hong Kong, providing scholarships, a food bank, disease and medical research, medical support, health checks and university research.
Through the Foundation, its founder Dr Edwin Leong Siu-hung, who is chairman and founder of Tai Hung Fai Enterprise Company Limited, established the PolyU-Henry G Leong Mobile Integrative Health Centre, a vehicle that visits selected districts in Hong Kong to provide free health checks and monitoring to needy elderly people. Equipped with advanced facilities, the Centre also serves as a cross-disciplinary research and teaching and learning platform for health care professionals and students. Over the past years, the Centre has served over 3,000 elderly people, who have made more than 33,000 visits. It also offers valuable clinical placement opportunities for students of our Faculty of Health and Social Sciences through their participation in supporting the Centre’s operations.
Himself a successful entrepreneur, Dr Leong saw his own company grow from a small set-up into a diversified property company. He has supported local universities in the creation of a training programme for care workers of the elderly, in setting up professorships for research into related aspects, and in sponsoring scholarships for students in Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland.
Appointee
Professor He Mingguang
Professor Mingguang He is currently Chair Professor of Experimental Ophthalmology at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and has been conferred the title “Global STEM Scholar” under Hong Kong Government’s Global STEM Professorship Scheme. Previously he was Distinguished Professor of Ophthalmology of Research at Melbourne Accelerator Programme at the University of Melbourne and Centre for Eye Research Australia, and Director of WHO Collaborating Centre for Prevention of Blindness (Australia).
Renowned globally for his expertise in vision-related clinical and epidemiological research, Professor He has led some ground-breaking studies. Noteworthy among these are the first population-based study on myopia in China, the pioneering population-based study on glaucoma in China, a clinical trial published in JAMA 2015 that demonstrates the efficacy of increased outdoor time on myopia prevention, and a prophylactic clinical trial on angle closure glaucoma published in Lancet 2019. His 500-plus published papers have attracted more than 20,000 citations, achieving a Google scholar H index 75.
Professor He has secured substantial research funding exceeding AUD10 million in Australia, including prestigious grants such as the Investigator Grants of the National Health and Medical Research Council as well as the Medical Research Future Fund for his ground-breaking research on artificial intelligence in ophthalmology.
Professor He also played pivotal roles in various ophthalmology organisations. He founded the Asia Pacific Tele-Ophthalmology Society and served as its first president. He was a founding council member of Asia Pacific Myopia Society and held the position of deputy Secretary-General for Asia Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology.
Professor He was honoured as one of the top 100 most influential ophthalmologists on the esteemed Ophthalmologist Power List in 2023 in recognition of his demonstrating “Ten Years of Excellence and Impact in Ophthalmology”.
