FBE Student Leadership Award aims to recognise and reward HKU Business School undergraduate students who have demonstrated leadership within the University and the wider community; and to promote informal learning through students’ participation in extra-curricular activities, involvement in community service and student leadership.
Five FBE students have won the Award in 2020/21, the award winners are:
Mr. Agarwal Naman, BEcon&Fin, Year 3
“It is indeed a great honour for me to receive the FBE Student Leadership Award. The recognition will certainly encourage me to continue making relevant contributions to society in the future, through actions in both my personal and professional space.”
Mr. Leung Chak Tim, BBA(Acc&Fin), Year 2
“With the comprehensive support from HKU, I have chances to serve international businesses and foundations as well as taking up important roles in the University. It is such a pleasure to be the recipient of the FBE Student Leadership Award 2020-21. It recognises student’s leadership contribution and encourage me to pass on the passion, spirit and energy.”
Miss Mahendru Gauri, BBA(IBGM), Year 3
“I’m extremely grateful to the HKU Business School for providing me a wide variety of extra-curricular opportunities which have fuelled my holistic development. It is an honour to receive the FBE Leadership Award and I hope to continue doing meaningful work and contributing to society in all possible ways.”
Mr. Mak Lai Hang, BBA(Law)&LLB, Year 3
“I am very grateful for the recognition and support the HKU Business School has given me through the FBE Student Leadership Award, which was only possible due to the incredible teams and people I worked with. The School’s generous and impactful Award inspires me to continue to lead volunteer projects that can meaningfully empower our community.”
Mr. Wat Tsz Cheung, BBA(IBGM), Year 5
“I’m incredibly grateful to have received the FBE Student Leadership Award. This is a great recognition for students who strive to make a difference to our school and wider community. Thank you to the HKU Business School for continually supporting organizations such as 180 Degrees Consulting, in helping us broaden our impact.”
Teams of HKU Business School won the 1st runner up and the merit award in HKICPA Business Case Competition 2020. This year, the competition received more than 919 teams’ participation from various institutions in Hong Kong, Greater China and Macau regions. Participating teams were required to submit written proposals on a case study in catering industry for screening. After several rounds of evaluation, six finalist teams were selected for competing in the Final Oral Presentation Day which was held online on November 28, 2020.
The HKICPA Business Case Competition is an inter-tertiary event aims at developing students business skills, cultivating their professional judgment and preparing themselves for the business environment.
In the first round, as we were required to draft a 15-page business proposal for a catering company, we spent two weeks brainstorming and polishing our written proposal. During the process, we all spent quite a long time coming up with new ideas and assessing each planned strategy’s feasibility. Since we were from different programmes and majors, we also learnt a lot from each other such as managerial accounting, financial derivatives, marketing, valuation and so on, which also made our proposal more multi-faceted and professional.
The final round was quite different from the first round as it required a high level of presentation skills. We needed to put our content into very concise sentences and pay attention to our presence and oral expressions. The Q&A part was also very crucial because it required us to consider our proposed strategies thoroughly and comprehensively enough. Thanked to the support and guidance from Dr. Olivia Leung, we learnt how to give an attractive story-telling presentation with delicate coherences and links between each part, as well as a presentation full of team collaborations.
Though the competition was switched to online mode, we still had an enjoyable teamwork and competition experience. HKICPA Business Case Competition enabled us to learn new knowledge and explore different fields in business. It also facilitated our teamwork ability. We were glad to have participated in the competition!
The annual conference International Conference on Electronic Business (ICEB) is an excellent opportunity for the scholars to share research ideas and get informed about the latest development in the field of electronic commerce.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary, the very first International Conference on Electronic Business (ICEB 2020) virtual conference is hosted by HKU Business School this year during December 5-7, 2020. The conference theme this year is “Electronic Business under COVID-19 Pandemic”. We received 71 submissions and 54 papers were accepted into the final programme of 19 sessions. The topic areas of the papers include artificial intelligence, big data, machine learning, blockchain, COVID-19 issues, E-collaboration, E-commerce, E-education, E-innovation, E-marketing, E-SCM, E-sustainability, IoT, social commerce, technological issues, and user behaviors.
In this conference, there are 55 registered scholars from 16 countries and regions, including China, Germany, Hong Kong, Houston, Ireland, Lithuania, Malaysia, New Zealand, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, UAE, UK, USA. This year, the Best Paper Award Committee had selected 4 top-quality papers to receive the awards.
The International Conference on Electronic Business is an affiliated conference of Association of Information Systems. It brings together leading Electronic Business scholars in Asia and around the world. The conference is held under the supervision of The International Consortium for Electronic Business (ICEB) editorial board and is the top academic Electronic Business conference in the world. It brings together top researchers in Electronic Business field and related areas within Asia and around the world to present cutting-edge research and exchange intellectual ideas.
Three undergraduate students of HKU Business School took part in the HKSI Institute Scholarship Programme 2020 and were awarded Champion, 1st Runner-up & team award, and Finalist.
Participating students were required to write a 1000 word essay on the topic “What does it take to develop a career in the increasingly digitalised financial industry?” Eight finalists were then selected to work on a research project in groups of two to compete for attractive cash prizes and premier internship opportunities offered by leading firms in accounting, banking and financial services.
Since its launch in 2004, HKSI Institute Scholarship Programme has provided university students an avenue to widen their horizons and advance their career development for the financial industry.
Sharing from the Awarded Students:
Champion – Lee Chi Lam Esther, BEcon&Fin
“HKSI Scholarship Programme 2020 has been a fruitful journey to deepen my understanding towards the financial sector. I have learnt about the changes in the finance industry in the realm of technology, such as the implementation of ‘Digital Person’. I am also grateful to have received valuable mentoring from Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, which has allowed me to get a head start on building my career path in the banking industry.”
1st Runner-up & team award* – Lee Siu Hin Aaron, BBA(Law)&LLB
”Despite majoring in law, I have embraced different opportunities in the financial sector. It is for this reason that I have joined the HKSI Scholarship. The experience in shadowing Mr. Paul Day, head of operation from Morgan Stanley, is an eye-opening and precious one. Therefore, stay open-minded and seize your opportunities. You may gain more than what you have ever expected from the journey.”
*shared with another student from City University of Hong Kong
Finalist – Ma Chun Ming James, BFin(AMPB)
“The HKSI scholarship programme was fun, intellectually stimulating, and challenging. Experienced senior executives of multinational financial institutions come together to guide you to an interactive research project. The programme strives to discover dynamic ways to ensure this is a fun and interactive competition! I highly recommend students from the faculty to join the programme next year.”
Champion Miss Esther Lee (2nd from left) accompanied by HKU Representative Prof. Anna Wong (right) to accept award from Mr. Barry Tong (2nd from right) of Grant Thornton, Programme Chair and Lead Sponsor, and Mr. Dicky Hung (left) of SPD Bank, Research Project Sponsor.
Mr. Aaron Lee (3nd from right) and Mr. Alex Kwok (3nd from left) accompanied by Prof. Anna Wong (left) and Prof. Stephen Shum (right) to accept the Team Award from Ms. Katherine Ng (2nd from right), Chairman of HKSI Institute, and Mr. Victor Lee (2nd from left), Chairman of Panel Interview.
Finalists accompanied by university representatives to accept awards from Mr. Christopher Tang (2nd from left), Member of Panel Interview, Mr. Kevin Liem (right), Volunteer Marker, Mr. Barry Tong (2nd from right) and Mr. Kingston Tsang (left).
The COVID-19 pandemic has subdued our physical economy, but mankind’s innovative spirit is indominable. On November 14, 2020, Professor Hongbin Cai, Dean of HKU Business School, and his PhD advisor cum 2020 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, Professor Paul Robert Milgrom from Stanford University were invited for discussion at the 11th Caixin Summit “Rebuilding Global Trust” on the development of auction theory and the study of market design. Professor Milgrom spiced up the conference by sharing his Nobel Prize worth of masterpiece—a customised auction model that brings Genesis to the United States (US) broadcast landscape.
The auction model, invented by Professor Milgrom and his team, is a classic example of combining economic theory and cutting-edge computer science technology into practice. The project cost around 10 billion dollars but generated a revenue of approximately 20 billion dollars. Professor Cai applauded that the development of auction theories and its application is breathtaking throughout these decades. He believed that new and complex practical problems present new opportunities for economic research and analytical advancements. And at the same time, those researches and analysis can provide solutions to problems and challenges.
Professor Milgrom also shared the same view that the blending of academic theories with advanced technologies could be applied to improve social equity. Using the COVID-19 vaccine as an example, a customised auction system could be developed to ensure that the vaccine will be assigned to the groups with the most urgent need. Despite some questions about the ambiguity of macroeconomic theories, which are too abstract to be practical in general, Professor Milgrom pointed out that macroeconomic theories share great synergies with computer science. While computer scientists are good at making predictions under a ceteris paribus condition, theories from economics, political science, and psychology would be useful to make such predictions based on more realistic conditions.
Professor Cai also totally agreed with the observation of Professor Milgrom. He illustrated that economists are living in a time where interdisciplinary knowledge could be applied to practical issues way much easier than any time in history. There will be endless possibilities combing economic knowledge into machine learning and data analytics. As a closing remark, he urged us to keep up with the times and be open to new ideas.
Professor Kevin Zhou, Chair of Strategy and International Business, has been named by Clarivate Analytics in the list of “Highly Cited Researchers 2020” among the world’s top researchers for five consecutive years since 2016.
The list recognises world-class researchers selected for their exceptional performance, demonstrated by production of multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in Web of Science.
Gauri Mahendru, a year 3 BBA(IBGM) student wins the championship (team award) in the “International Business Agility Labs: Accounting”, a virtual global case competition organised by the Center for Global Business of the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland during November 6 – 13, 2020. She and her team members from other universities worked together to solve a real-world business problem for a Singaporean company.
The multicultural team embraced the differences in others because of the diverse skills and perspective that each team member can bring to the table. “By working with people from different parts of the world, I witnessed the advantages of diversity of thought firsthand. I also learnt to effectively communicate and collaborate with people from different backgrounds. I am extremely grateful to HKU Business School for offering me this exciting opportunity and look forward to more of such experiences in the future,” says Gauri.
The champion team consisted of five members — Gauri Mahendru (HKU), Hiu Lam Liu (HKUST), Allison Lu (UMD), Dajah Chambers (Bowie State), and Brianna Hooks (Bowie State).
The inaugural HKU Business Case Challenge (HBCC) 2020, organised by HKU Business School, was successfully completed on November 7, 2020.
Aiming to provide an opportunity for undergraduate students to hone their case cracking, analytical and presentation skills for participating in future case competitions, HBCC was launched in September 2020. 28 teams of students from HKU Business School worked on the Ocean Park case and submitted video presentations in the Preliminary Round. Six best teams advanced to the Final Round and presented their solutions to the judging panel. Champion, 1st Runner-up and 2nd Runner-up were identified. The Champion team will represent HKU Business School to compete with elite students from top universities around the globe in one of the international case competitions.
Dr. Winnie LEUNG, Assistant Dean (Undergraduate) of HKU Business School commented that both the School and the participating students had achieved their goals through this challenge. “The competition is very competitive this year. Throughout the process, students have practised a lot on their problem-solving skills, communication skills and leadership skills. The School has also achieved our goal for providing a platform to develop students’ soft skills as well as identifying candidates for overseas case competitions.” Dr. Leung said.
Mr. Jeroen VAN DEN BERG, Assistant Director of Asia Case Research Centre of HKU Business School said, “I am truly surprised by the quality of the presentations. All teams did very well.” Another judge, Mr. Jimmy WOO, Adjunct Associate Professor of HKU Business School, also mentioned that, “The case question was not an easy situation to resolve. I am impressed by all teams’ performance.”
Ms. Christina WONG, Accenture Managing Director for Strategy & Consulting in Greater China, who was also one of the judges, gave pieces of advice to the teams, “In today’s world, there is a new way of doing innovation and co-creation. Don’t focus too much on what you think. Instead, you should gather all the opinions from different people and try to come up with a solution that can incorporate different perspectives. This will help innovations, and making ideas to come true!”
Champion: Team “Advocase”
Dr. Winnie LEUNG, Assistant Dean (Undergraduate) of HKU Business School (first from left), presents the award to the Champion team.
Team Members Mr. KUA Mang Ting Daniel, BBA(Acc&Fin), Year 1 (photo position: 1st from right) Miss RYOU Soo Min, BBA, Year 2 (this student presented through Zoom as she was out of town on the presentation day) Miss WIJAYA Swanny, BSc(QFin),Year 2 (photo position: 2nd from right) Miss ZHANG Borui, BEcon&Fin, Year 2 (photo position: 2nd from left)
Students’ Sharing “From HBCC, we have gained a lot of invaluable lessons, the biggest takeaway is the significance of teamwork. Despite having known each other for only one month, we learned to trust and be supportive to each other throughout the journey, which was reflected during the presentation and Q&A session and was valued by the judges. Besides that, we also got the opportunity to train our hard skills in case-cracking, such as constructing a sound business strategy and performing financial analysis. We still have a long way to go, and HBCC has made us excited for future case competitions!”
1st Runner-up: Team “HKU”
Mr. Jeroen VAN DEN BERG, Assistant Director of Asia Case Research Centre of HKU Business School (first from left), and Mr. Jimmy WOO, Adjunct Associate Professor of HKU Business School (first from right), present the award to the 1st Runner-up team.
Team Members Mr. CHENG Ryan, BBA(Law)&LLB, Year 2 (2nd from right) Miss CHAN Ingrid Nga Yu, BBA(Acc&Fin), Year 2 (3rd from right) Mr. CHAN Yin Tsung Lawrence, BBA(IBGM), Year 2 (3rd from left) Miss LAM Hoi Ting Christy, BBA(IBGM), Year 2 (2nd from left)
Students’ Sharing “This case was highly relevant to us: we grew up with Ocean Park and now as adults, we proposed solutions to save our childhood park. Throughout the preparation process, we enhanced our understanding and appreciation of our local history and culture. Although we participated in external case competitions before, we gained a lot from the HKU Business Case Challenge including all the new-found knowledge as well as advices given by the esteemed judges. We are confident that with all these valuable knowledge and advices, our performance in future case competitions will be more compelling and in-depth.”
2nd Runner-up: Team “Euphoria”
Ms. Christina WONG, Accenture Managing Director for Strategy & Consulting in Greater China (first from right), presents the award to the 2nd Runner-up team.
Team Members Miss FUNG Cheuk Lam, BBA(Law)&LLB, Year 2 (2nd from left) Miss LEE Chi Lam Esther, BEcon&Fin, Year 3 (3rd from left) Miss LUI On Ni, BBA(Law)&LLB, Year 4 (2nd from right) Miss TANG Pui Lam, BBA(Law)&LLB, Year 2 (1st from left)
Students’ Sharing “HKU Business Case Challenge 2020 had been a fruitful journey to accelerate our learning curve, all the way from case cracking, identification of root causes, team cooperation to presentation and delivery. It was a perfect opportunity for our team to testify and apply the skill sets we acquired from the workshops organised by HKU International Case Society. It also strengthened our team bonding, especially when the case this time involved Ocean Park – a place of Collective Memories and the Legendary Risen Dead Miracle! We sincerely thank all distinguished judges for their detailed and astute advices!”
On November 13, the Vice-President and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning) announced the recipients of the University’s Teaching Excellence Awards 2020. Recipients from HKU Business School are:
Outstanding Teaching Award – Individual
Dr. Matthias Buehlmaier Principal Lecturer
Outstanding Teaching Award – Team
Mr. David Bishop Principal Lecturer
Teaching Innovation Award – Individual
Dr. Matthias Buehlmaier Principal Lecturer for Pioneering Social Learning in Business Education with Yocle
Teaching Innovation Award – Team
Mr. David Bishop Mr. David Lee Principal Lecturer Principal Lecturer for HKU edX Professional Certificate Programme in FinTech
The Faculty Teaching Award Scheme recognises and rewards teachers with outstanding achievements and significant contributions in teaching and student learning in the Faculty. The award-winners for the academic year 2019-20 are:
Faculty Outstanding Teacher Award (Undergraduate Teaching)
Dr. Tak Huang Assistant Professor
“I believe that effective teaching involves providing a challenging but supportive learning experience for students. Students may not like challenges, but they often learn better from their own mistakes as they try to handle the challenges in their learning. As teachers, we may support students’ learning by guiding them to solve the problems on their own and providing ample feedback to facilitate this process. In this way, students not only have a better grasp of the disciplinary knowledge but also are empowered with confidence in their own ability to take up whatever challenges they may encounter in their life.”
Mr. David Lee Principal Lecturer
“Teaching remains a humbling experience for me, but I’m always grateful for the opportunity to teach great students and to be supported by and work with wonderful colleagues. During these turbulent times, I’ve been reminded of the positive impact that we can still have through our teaching even though we are limited in how we interact with our students. As I’ve reflected on this responsibility, I’ve realized in many ways that teachers are leaders, and collectively we have an opportunity to increase both our teaching and leadership agility to better serve our students. It has been meaningful to be on this learning journey with students as we learn to navigate this new landscape together.
And perhaps because of the current challenges, I am acutely aware, even more than previous years, of the privilege it is in my life to teach at HKU.”
Professor Xin Wang Professor
“The accounting profession has faced significant challenges in the recent years with the technology advancement. It is not surprising that students often raise concerns about whether the financial accounting knowledge is still useful to foster problem-solving skill and how the accounting courses can enhance students’ knowledge suitable for the new era of big data. To ensure students’ learning experience in my course, my first goal is to engage students in learning by clarifying that our accounting system has been developing together with the changes in the modern society and that the role of accounting knowledge has never been weakened and instead become more important in all aspects of the modern economy. For various accounting topics, I make lectures very efficient by focusing on the fundamental concepts with intuitive examples of the real life. In addition, I emphasize the evolvement of accounting rules because I see the necessity to let students know that our accounting profession embraces the developments in other disciplines including economics, finance and even computer engineering. I often use the example of the change in the accounting rules for the capitalization of R&D costs for software industry.
The second goal of my teaching is to help students become smart users of financial information. Many students have an impression of accounting being “boring”. My tactic is to teach them to dig out useful information from those seemingly boring accounting data. Once students realize that accounting data is a gold mine for financial analysis and investment decisions, they are incentivized to exert efforts on the learning of accounting subjects.
Overall, I strive for excellence in teaching. My efforts on the two teaching goals seem to work very well for students’ learning experience in my course. I am happy to share my insights with you.”
Faculty Outstanding Teacher Award (Postgraduate Teaching)
Dr. Sammy Fung Principal Lecturer
“It is my great pleasure to serve as a lecturer in the Business School at HKU over the past decade. My teaching practice has always revolved around two major focuses. First, “learn how to think” – I aspire to create a learning environment that fosters not only students’ technical knowledge, but also their critical thinking and problem solving skills. Second, “learn to learn” – I encourage students to become self-directed learners and problem solvers, engage their curiosity towards the material presented and take that curiosity to the next level by discovering new possibilities and new aspects in their daily lives. I strongly believe that inspiring students for lifelong learning which can lead them to achieve a successful career and contribute to the society in the future. ”
Professor Jin Li Professor
“As an economist, my approach to teaching is based on demand and supply. On the demand side, I listen to students and illustrate concepts and principles using examples they find interesting. This way, students become more engaged and find the class easier to follow. On the supply side, I focus on topics linked to my research expertise. This makes me a more enthusiastic and effective teacher. But demand and supply aside, there is also trust. I trust our students and design the class to empower them. I trust myself to experiment with new material and topics. Trust makes teaching fun and dynamic. ”
Dr. Rujing Meng Principal Lecturer
“I love teaching. I always teach from the bottom of my heart. As to teaching philosophy, I deeply believe in the importance of teachers’ passion in teaching and genuinely care about students in achieving effective learning. With sincere love for teaching and students, I adopt student-centered approach to course and programme design and advocate learning-by-doing in helping students achieve meaningful learning outcomes.
I am glad to make a difference in students’ learning. A student commented, “She can always explain concepts clearly. Her teaching style makes me feel inspired in a way that I am eager to learn more about the financial world. She is definitely one of the best professors in FBE.” I will strive to continue making a positive impact on students’ learning and life.”
Faculty Teaching Innovation Award
Dr. Matthias Buehlmaier Principal Lecturer
“To support students and guide them, I use technology to create a community in which students can interact and learn from each other, ultimately fostering a form of social learning. To facilitate the creation of a community, I use a new app called “Yocle,” whose basic idea can be summarized as being a social media app for teaching and learning. I am pioneering its use at HKU Business School with the goal of discovering whether it can successfully be used in business education. It is a new app and I was one of the few people using it at the beginning at HKU, with the goal of making myself very approachable to students. I was very fortunate to be invited to present at several workshops at the Centre for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) and, together with Dr. Cecilia Chan, have created an introductory video about Yocle available on YouTube. Overall, I am deeply grateful for the generous support, mentoring, and encouragement received over the years at HKU Business School and CETL; without them it would not have been possible to receive the inaugural Faculty Teaching Innovation Award.”
