Professor Chen shared how he found ways to jump over hurdles and get around roadblocks, so that they did not stop him from moving forward and he hoped his stories could shed some light onto positive thoughts of students when facing adversity in life. Students actively participated in the Q&A session after the seminar.

Both speakers Mr. SONG Xiangchen, who will start as a PhD student in Carnegie Mellon University and Miss LI Yuqi, who is currently studying at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as a PhD student are 2017 ECE graduates, they generously shared their experience in applying graduate studies, undergraduate research and tips about how to find good research topics. They also talked about how to improve communication skills, problem solving skills and the ways to find initiatives. The talks ended with interactive and informative Q&A among participants.

Winners of Outstanding Teacher Awards 2020, namely Dr Ray Cheung, Mr Van Ting, Dr Cheng Wang and Prof Moshe Zukerman, were invited to share their teaching philosophy and experiences with students. Important factors to effective teaching and learning, innovations in teaching, blended approach on programming education, etc., were discussed on the day.

Ways for achieving simple, consistent and accurate marking and checking; how to make use of Canvas for efficient marking; and tips on improving teaching quality were shared. Some TAs were invited to share their teaching experiences as well. The talk ended with active discussion on effective teaching practices among participants.

In this talk, he shared his substantial experiences on writing a good research paper and discussed how to present it in a more professional and readable fashion. Valuable tips were shared to address some common problems that hinder a student from writing up a high-quality and attractive paper for publication.

The valuable key takeaways covered by Dr. Wang and Dr Yuan included whether students should go for graduate school and their expectation, pros and cons of graduate schools in the US and HK, criteria for a successful application to US graduate schools and to HKPFS and the current global situation changes the prospects of graduate school applications.

The valuable key takeaways covered by Dr Hung included the factors and policies that favor technology start-ups in the U.S., suitable models of technology start-ups in the Greater Bay Area and Hong Kong, and the unique challenges and opportunities in the high-tech industries in Hong Kong.

“Nowadays soft skills of engineers is considered much more important than ever, which is a feedback we receive constantly from the industry,” Prof Pang explained the purpose of launching this series.

Nowadays in an interconnected world people of different national and cultural backgrounds come across others in both professional and casual situations, some people skills, which seem trivial, such as how you project your voice, when you should crack a joke to break the ice, or what words you use in your conversations, would however have a huge impact on how others perceive you. Prof Chow reiterated in the workshop that we must always respect others and know how to show our respect in a way that others feel comfortable with us.

A final year student, getting 3 offers from Columbia University, University of California San Diego, and University of California Irvine, partnered with Prof Chow on the day to share the opportunities for postgraduate studies in overseas countries; tips on how to best present the application; and important things to note in preparing applications.