- Recognition & Awards
- Expressions Summer 2025
Extolling Exemplary Educators
HKU rewards two Faculty professors for outstanding contributions to teaching and supervision
Two HKU Faculty of Dentistry staff members have received HKU recognition for exceptional performance in teaching or supervision that has significantly enhanced student learning outcomes and academic growth. Professor Phoebe Lam, Clinical Assistant Professor in Paediatric Dentistry, won an Early Career Teaching Award, and Professor John Wang, Professor in Applied Oral Sciences and Community Dental Care, won an Outstanding Research Student Supervisor Award. They received their prizes at the HKU Excellence Awards Presentation Ceremony for 2024, which was held on 27 March 2025 at the Rayson Huang Theatre.
Professor Phoebe Lam has been honoured with the Early Career Teaching Award.
Early Career Teaching Award
Professor Phoebe Lam has been actively involved in co-designing and organising dental outreach and service campaigns to involve undergraduate students in community engagement and service, as part of their learning experience.
Over the years, her teams have gained numerous grants and awards for their impactful service projects conducted across Hong Kong, Mainland China, Cambodia, Uganda, Togo, and Tanzania. These accolades include seven HKU SERVICE 100 Fund grants, six Gallant Ho Experiential Learning Fund grants, an HKU KE Impact Project Fund grant, the HKU Knowledge Exchange Excellence Award (2015), and the Stephen HY Wei Award in Paediatric Dentistry (2016).
I aspire to be a compass, guiding students in the right direction, empowering them to autonomously choose their paths, and encouraging them to reach new heights and horizons.
“I aspire to be a compass, guiding students in the right direction, empowering them to autonomously choose their paths, and encouraging them to reach new heights and horizons,” said Professor Lam, commenting on her approach to education. “My goal is to cultivate students to be competent clinicians, critical thinkers, and global leaders.”
Professor John Wang receives the Outstanding Research Student Supervisor Award 2024.
Outstanding Research Student Supervisor Award
During his time so far at the HKU Faculty of Dentistry, Professor John Wang has supervised a total of 3 MPhil and 28 PhD students, fostering interdisciplinary teams that have contributed to high-impact publications and grant-funded projects.
Professor Wang’s research interests are in bioinformatics, gene regulatory network construction, artificial intelligence, and methodology development for data analysis. He has published over 130 papers in journals such as Nature Genetics, Nature Communications, Nature Machine Intelligence, Circulation, NAR, and Bioinformatics. He has received research funding from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council, Hong Kong Government Health Bureau, National Natural Science Foundation of China, and United States National Institutes of Health, as the project leader or principal investigator.
I thrive on sharing cutting-edge knowledge and drawing inspiration from my students’ energy and innovation.
Under his mentorship, his research students have earned prestigious fellowships such as the Rhodes Scholarship, Schlumberger Foundation Scholarship, and HKU–Swire Scholarship. Two of his former PhD students have been awarded HKU Outstanding Research Postgraduate Awards, and some have become faculty members in universities in the United States, Hong Kong, and Mainland China.
“I thrive on sharing cutting-edge knowledge and drawing inspiration from my students’ energy and innovation,” said Professor Wang.