Honorary professorships are usually presented to individuals in recognition of their academic contributions and merits. One very deserving recipient of this title is Professor Chih-chang (C.C.) Chu, who has been appointed as honorary professor at ITC. Professor Chu was the first recipient of the Rebecca Q. Morgan ' 60 Endowed Chair Professor of the Department of Fibre Science and Apparel Design, College of Human Ecology, at Cornell University in the USA. He has made many valuable contributions to teaching and research in the field of biomedical materials and medical devices for repairing the human body.
Professor Chu received his PhD in Chemistry from Florida State University in the USA. He was also the recipient of the State University of New York Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities in 2009.
Professor Chu served on the Biology/Medicine Panel of the Hong Kong Research Grant Council from 2009 to 2013, and was a member of the Hong Kong Research Grant Council Collaborative Research Fund Committee in 2014. He also serves on various editorial boards, including for the Open Biomaterials Journal, Open Material Science Journal, Open Macromolecules Journal, Journal of Fiber Bioengineering and Informatics, and Journal of Bioengineering and Biomedical Science since 2008. He has published 219 referred research papers (h-index: 62; citation: 12,200) and three books, and received 80 US and international patents.
Professor Chu focuses on the multidisciplinary study of design, synthesis and evaluation of a new novel family of biologic active biodegradable polymers (pseudo-protein biomaterials) that would have very unique biological properties like muted inflammatory response, promoting cell growth, facilitating wound healing and would be nontoxic.
He is currently collaborating with the Hong Kong Baptist University to advance the delivery of Chinese medicine via his lab's new pseudo-protein biomaterial nanotechnology for the most challenging type of breast cancer treatment - triple-negative breast cancer.
