Professor Paul Lam Kwan-sing became President of The Open University of Hong Kong on 1 April 2021. When the university was retitled Hong Kong Metropolitan University on 1 September 2021, he became its first President under the new name. HKMU's biography records that he studied for his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Hong Kong between 1979 and 1984, received a Commonwealth Scholarship in 1984 to undertake doctoral study at the University of Sheffield, and then held a postdoctoral fellowship at King's College, University of London. He returned to Hong Kong in 1988 as a lecturer at City Polytechnic of Hong Kong, subsequently held positions at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (1990–1992) and Victoria University in Australia (1992–1994), and joined City University of Hong Kong's Department of Chemistry in 1994. At CityU he served as Acting Vice-President (Undergraduate Education), Vice-President (Student Affairs), Chief-of-Staff and director of the State Key Laboratory of Marine Pollution. Before joining the Open University he was Executive Director of Special Projects, Jeanie Hu Professor of Science and Chair Professor of the Department of Chemistry. A scholar of environmental chemistry, ecotoxicology and environmental risk assessment, he has published more than 400 papers in international refereed journals and been responsible for more than 35 major government consultancy projects, including assessments of the risks to Hong Kong cetaceans and waterbirds from toxic contaminants. His work has contributed to the international harmonisation of analytical methods and has influenced policy and legislation internationally. He received the Natural Science Award (Second Class) from the Chinese Ministry of Education in 2011, 2012 and 2019, was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 2008 and received the Silver Bauhinia Star in 2014. HKMU's history page describes the university as Hong Kong's largest self-financing university, with more than 140,000 graduates, and records that it was established by the government in 1989 as the Open Learning Institute, attained university title in 1997 and was retitled Hong Kong Metropolitan University in 2021.
Achievements
- 2021 · Became President of the Open University of Hong Kong, which was retitled Hong Kong Metropolitan University the same year