University of Hong Kong

This course provides a solid foundation of organic chemistry. It focuses primarily on the basic principles to understand the structure and reactivity of organic molecules, with examples illustrating the role of organic chemistry in daily life and industry. Topics: chemistry of common organic functional groups: ketones and aldehydes; carboxylic acids and their derivatives; amines; aromatic compounds. Principles of organic synthesis. Detailed considerations of reaction mechanisms. Spectroscopic tools (UV-Vis, IR, NMR, and MS) for characterization and identification of organic compounds. 

This course introduces the principles of investments and major issues currently of interest to all investors. It focuses on stock markets, portfolio theory and practice, equilibrium in capital markets, efficient market hypothesis, and behavior and portfolio performance evaluations. The course explores intuition and practical applications of investment theory and analytical analysis. 

We are entering the “Age of Big Data” – an extremely large amount of information is created every day, which is revolutionizing science and technology, governments, economy, and international development. A variety of sources contribute to the Big Data, including the Internet, Wikipedia, social networks (e.g. Facebook), micro blogs, mobile phones, and cameras. This era of “information burst” has brought convenience to our daily lives. More recently, the emergence of foundation models (e.g., GPT) is also an outcome of big data, massive high-quality is the fuel to the success training of these large machine learning models. However, the availability of such a vast amount of information has also created many problems. For example, reported incidents of leakage of private data, due to the use of the Foxy software, and the loss of USB drives that contain thousands of patients’ records, have raised serious legal and social concerns. The goal of this course is to engage students in examining the critical issues that they could encounter in the Age of Big Data. They will examine how Big Data is affecting our society and daily lives and how Big Data is used in our daily life. They will study the security and credibility issues of Big Data. They will also address the issues of organizing and exploring Big Data. Solutions proposed in legal, technological, and education domains will be explored and discussed.

This course examines the study of global climate systems and climate change. It covers the controls of temporal and spatial variations in earth's climate and its histories of past climates preserved in the geological record, as well as modern research methods that are used in paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental reconstructions.

This course studies hormones and the regulation of metabolism, reproduction and water/salt homeostasis in our body. Topics include: adrenal medulla; adrenal cortex, ACTH, renin-angiotensin, and atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP); the thyroid; hypothalamus releasing and inhibitory factors; pituitary gland; neurohypophysis; growth hormones; prolactin; and gastro-entero-pancreatric peptides. 

This course examines the challenges of increasing travel demand, impacts on people, process of policy formulation, structure of governmental control, engagement of stakeholders and evaluation of performance. With reference to the case of Hong Kong, the evolution of the planning process and the development of policy instruments are illustrated. To provide a future outlook, an overview of recent trends and near-term prospects within the wider context of sustainability for delivery of transport services is introduced.

This course examines advanced topics in equilibrium statistical physics. Topics include ensemble theory; theory of simple gases, ideal bose systems, ideal fermi systems; statistical mechanics of interacting systems; statistical field theory; and some topics in the theory of phase transition may be selected.

As a result of Chinese diaspora and increasing global cultural interactions, scholars have proposed various analytical frameworks to remap the current field of Chinese-language literature and film. The concept of “sinophone” is such an attempt which celebrates the diverse expressions of “chineseness” and underscores the local particularities in which each Chinese-language or film is produced. This course offers students an opportunity to study selected sinophone literary works (by writers residing primarily in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the west) and films, and to explore and challenge existing notions of nationalism, cultural identity, and linguistic authenticity.

Museums have become one of the most popular ways of telling history. Many scholars argue that museums are not neutral places; rather, they are often used for a wide range of strategic purposes: regulating social behavior, building citizenship and national identity, and expanding state power. But museums also face a variety of constraints and challenges: culture, money, politics, physical space, locating and selecting appropriate artifacts, and forming narratives. This course considers these issues by looking at history museums and heritage preservation in Hong Kong. The goals of the course are to familiarize students with a range of theoretical approaches to museum studies; explore the ways in which museums and heritage preservation can be used to further certain political, cultural, and commercial agendas; and help students learn to write an analytical research essay based on readings and museum fieldwork.

This course examines the practical knowledge and skills of some advanced analytics and statistical modeling problems.