Professor (Chair) S T Lee of the Department of Physics and Materials Science at City University of Hong Kong  has been conferred the 2005 State Natural Science Award (SNSA) for a distinguished project on nanoscience. This is the second time Professor Lee has been awarded the SNSA since 2002.

 

Professor Lee’s achievement once again testifies that CityU’s wealth of scientific expertise is gaining greater recognition in the region.

 

The SNSA is China’s most prestigious award in the field of natural sciences. This year 135 projects from all over the country have been nominated. The highly competitive selection exercise involves a three-stage review by the award committee. Awards are conferred as either first or second class. Professor Lee’s project falls within the second-class category.

 

On hearing the news of his election, Professor Lee extended his gratitude to CityU where he has worked for 11 years. He said the University’s excellent research environment facilitated his work and he thanked his CityU colleagues for their support.

 

Professor Lee has made outstanding contributions to the fields of superdiamond technology, nanoscience and organic electroluminscence. He is the director of the Centre of Super-Diamond and Advanced Films (COSDAF) at CityU and the founding director of the Nano-organic Photoelectric Laboratory, The Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, CAS. He is an adjunct professor at several universities in mainland China, including Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Fudan University, and Zhejiang University.

 

After receiving his bachelor’s from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, his master’s from the University of Rochester and his PhD from the University of British Columbia, Professor Lee worked as a research fellow in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California and at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. In addition, he had spent 17 years at Eastman Kodak in the US before joining CityU in 1994.