Croucher Scholars and Fellows who wish to apply please send an email to cfadmin@croucher.org.hk enclosing a copy of their employment offer letter for consideration.

With the support of the Croucher Foundation, five full-cost scholarships will be awarded by the Cambridge Science Summer School to talented Hong Kong undergraduate students participating in the 2012 summer school, to be held in Cambridge over eight weeks starting in July 2012.  Eligibility is restricted to permanent Hong Kong residents.

If you are an undergraduate student in Hong Kong and are interested in attending the course and/or applying for one of the scholarships offered with the support of the Croucher Foundation please visit the web site of the Cambridge Science Summer School for more information:

www.bioc.cam.ac.uk/summerschool.html

Dr Tak-Sing Wong, a 2010 Croucher postdoctoral fellow and his colleagues at Harvard University have applied the strategy of the plant to create a new material that repels just about any type of liquid and does so even under harsh conditions like high pressure and freezing temperatures.

The bio-inspired liquid repellence technology, described in the 22 September 2011 issue of the scientific journal Nature should find applications in biomedical fluid handling, fuel transport, and anti-fouling and anti-icing technologies. It could even lead to self-cleaning windows and improved optical devices.

“The effect is similar to when a car hydroplanes, the tires literally gliding on the water rather than the road,” says Wong. “In the case of the unlucky ants, the oil on the bottom of their feet will not stick to the slippery coating on the plant. It’s like oil floating on the surface of a puddle.”

Inspired by the pitcher plant’s elegant solution, Wong and his colleagues designed a strategy for creating slippery surfaces by infusing a nano/microstructured porous material with a lubricating fluid. Like the pitcher plant, these surfaces are slippery for insects, but also repel a wide variety of liquids including oil.

By contrast, current state-of-the-art liquid repellent surfaces have taken cues from a different member of the plant world. The leaves of the lotus resist water due to the tiny microtextures on the surface; droplets balance on the cushion of air on the tips of the surface and bead up.

However, this “lotus effect” does not work well for organic or complex liquids. And if the surface is scratched or subject to extreme conditions, liquid drops tend to stick to or sink into the textures rather than roll away.

“This new repellent fluid surface offers additional benefits, as it is intrinsically smooth and free of defects,” says Wong. “Even after we damage a sample by scraping it with a knife or blade, the surface repairs itself almost instantaneously and the repellent qualities remain, making the surface self-healing.” The surface can be made optically transparent, and is therefore ideal for optical applications and self-cleaning, clear surfaces.

Reference: T-S Wong et al, Nature, 2011, 477, 443 (DOI:10.1038/nature10447)

This year the Foundation has made 9 postdoctoral and 14 doctoral awards, to a total of about HK$20 million, helping students to pursue work at Harvard, MIT, British Columbia, Northwestern, UC San Francisco, UC Berkeley, Caltech, Ohio State, Stanford, Colorado State, Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial, Berlin, Karolinska and CNRS, Montpellier among others.

We are now inviting applications for awards tenable from autumn 2012.

Croucher Fellowships for postdoctoral research (not for full-time career positions)

For: graduates who obtained doctoral degrees after July 2010; students in the final year of their doctoral studies; qualified medical doctors.

Tenable: at institutions outside Hong Kong.

Normally covers: airfare, a living subsidy, a conference grant and allowances, up to a maximum of two years.

Croucher Scholarships for full time PhD studies

For: First Class Honours graduates; or students expecting to attain an MPhil degree before September 2012; or final year undergraduate students (offers will be conditional on obtaining First Class Honours by July 2012).

Tenable: at institutions outside Hong Kong.

Normally covers: full tuition fees, airfare, a living subsidy, a conference grant, and allowances, for up to and including the third year of PhD studies.

Croucher Studentships for full time PhD studies

For: First Class Honours graduates; students expecting to attain an MPhil degree before September 2012; final year undergraduate students (offers will be conditional on obtaining First Class Honours by July 2012).

Tenable: at universities in Hong Kong.

Normally covers: HK$50,000 per annum up to and including the third year of PhD studies – may be held concurrently with a university postgraduate studentship or other awards.

How to apply

You must include detailed scientific proposal of your intended research, as well as an indication of your preferred institutions. So allow plenty of time to complete your application.

Starting from 2010, all applications should be submitted to the Croucher Foundation online at www.croucher.org.hk. For the 2012-13 selection exercise, applications should be submitted by 5p.m. on 15th November 2011 at the latest. Croucher Fellowships and Scholarships are highly competitive, so to ensure fair competition, we do not welcome requests from any individuals for help or counselling.

Through partnership agreements with French and German institutions, and the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, the Foundation will specially favour Hong Kong students with a number of full awards for pursuing research studies in topics in natural science, technology or medicine. For more information and access to the online application system, please click here.

This was the second meeting between UK and Hong Kong scientists to be held under the prestigious Frontiers of Science series. Frontiers of Science is an international programme for outstanding early career scientists which was initiated by the US National Academy of Sciences in 1989 and has since been adopted by the Royal Society in the UK and other national science academies and organisations the Alexander Von Humbolt Foundation and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

These multidisciplinary meetings aim to bring together future leaders in science to learn about cutting edge research in a format designed to cross traditional subject boundaries, encourage informal debate, and identify opportunities for collaboration. Topics covered in the September 2011 meeting included the formation of planetary systems, micro RNAs, biophotonics, artificial photosynthesis and stem cell research.

Speaking after the meeting Dr Subhanjoy Mohnaty of Imperial College said that the format for each topic – an introductory talk, followed by two on specialized aspects of the field, with an extended question and answer session at the end – was highly conducive to coming to grips with the subject at hand, its broader implications and relation to other disciplines. His comments were echoed by Dr Jade Shi of Hong Kong Baptist University who said “It is exactly this kind of intimate gathering that reminds us of the very essence of science, that it is without borders, founded upon reason, dedicated to understanding the unknown, and seeking wisdom behind data.”.

The second UK Hong Kong Frontiers of Science meeting took place over three days from 5 September 2011 and was jointly sponsored by the Royal Society and the Croucher Foundation.

Myotonic dystrophy type two (DM2) is an incurable disease characterised by muscle pain, weakness and delayed relaxation. Patients experience difficulties when performing routine tasks such as standing up from a seated position or relaxing their grip on objects. DM2 is caused by a mutation in one of the more than 1,000 genes on human chromosome 3. An expansion of a nucleotide repeat in this gene leads to the production of an altered form of its RNA transcripts, the messengers that normally carry genetic information from DNA templates on chromosomes to proteins. These altered transcripts, however, bind to and inhibit the activities of muscleblind-like (MBNL) proteins in cells, causing the clinical features of DM2.

Recent research efforts have focused on developing small molecules, or ligands, to disrupt the interaction between the abnormal RNA transcripts and MBNL proteins, thus treating DM2. There are several challenges to this approach. The RNA transcripts do not exist as isolated, linear structures in cells. Instead, they fold up and form secondary structures. These structures thus have to be taken into account when designing small molecules. However, the secondary structures formed by the altered transcripts in DM2 are currently unknown. Another challenge is the selectivity of the ligands – they should interact only with the target transcripts and not bind to other transcripts or proteins in cells.

In a recent issue of Nucleic Acids Research, a group at the University of Illinois published an article about the development of a series of small molecules targeting the pathogenic transcripts produced in DM2. Base on existing knowledge on the interaction between certain chemical groups and specific nucleotide mismatches on RNA transcripts. The group designed and synthesized a number of ligands possessing similar chemical motifs. Some of the ligands were found to interact with the RNA transcripts found in DM2. More important, two of the ligands were able to inhibit the interaction between the transcripts and the MBNL1 proteins with high selectivity over other targets. These results suggest that these synthetic molecules can potentially be used as therapies for DM2. Mr Chun-Ho Wong, one of the lead investigators of this project, commented “DM is still an incurable disease affecting lots of families worldwide. I hope our findings will help developing a cure for the disease.” Mr Wong is a 2007 Croucher Scholar who is studying for his PhD in Professor Steven Zimmerman’s laboratory at the University of Illinois.

A total of 23 young scientists were awarded Croucher Scholarships or Croucher Fellowships in 2011. They were selected in a competitive process including a paper based preliminary screening and an interview with a panel of scientists including at least one expert in the specific field of each candidate.

These talented individuals have been admitted to world-class universities and research institutes including Berkeley, Caltech, Harvard, MIT, UCSF and Stanford in the US and the Free University of Berlin, Cambridge, CNRS, Imperial College, the Karolinska Institute and Oxford in Europe.

Welcoming the “Croucher Class of 2011” Professor Mak noted that career path of a research scientist was not easy. To address fundamental scientific questions, and to work at the frontiers of knowledge required extraordinary dedication and an aptitude for hard work. But the results would be rewarding on a personal level and could help to solve some of the most important challenges facing this planet and its inhabitants.

Croucher Scholars and Fellows from previous years who had returned to Hong Kong joined the gathering and were invited to share their collective experience of life as a Croucher scholar and study overseas. Professor Randy Poon (Croucher Senior Research Fellow 2002) spoke about his life as an artist and scientist, and showed slides of his paintings and sculpture.

For a full list of 2011 Croucher Scholars and Croucher Fellows please click here.

5 August 2011