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The United College of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) has invited Prof. Inez Yau-Sheung Fung, Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of California, Berkeley, USA, as its Distinguished Visiting Scholar in 2015-16. She will visit United College between 12 and 25 October 2015 and deliver two public lectures on campus on ‘CO₂ Life Fantastic: the Global Carbon Cycle’ and ‘Plants, Water and Climate’. 

Both lectures will be delivered in English.  Members of the public are welcome.  Please register online at https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=340232. Details are as follows: 

1.  CO₂ Life Fantastic: the Global Carbon Cycle

Date:   Thursday, 15 October 2015
Time:   4:30 pm – 6:00 pm
Venue: LT1, Yasumoto International Academic Park, CUHK

2.  Plants, Water and Climate

Date:   Tuesday, 20 October 2015
Time:   4:30pm – 6:00pm
Venue: LT7, Lee Shau Kee Building, CUHK

For further information, please contact Mr George Lam at 3943 7598 or Ms. Amy Yeung at 3943 7455 of the Dean of Students’ Office, United College. 

Biography of Prof. Inez Fung 

Professor Fung was born and raised in Hong Kong.  Upon graduation from King’s College, she went to America and enrolled in Utica College in New York State.  She then transferred to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received there her S.B. degree (1971) in Applied Mathematics and Sc. D. (1977) in Meteorology. Her doctoral dissertation, entitled ‘The Organization of Spiral Rainbands in a Hurricane’, won the C.G. Rossby Award for Outstanding Thesis of the Year, and Professor Fung was the second woman to graduate from MIT with a doctorate degree in Meteorology. 

In 1998, she moved to the University of California (UC), Berkeley, and was appointed as the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor in the Physical Sciences, and at present she holds a concurrent appointment as a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science as well as the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management.  Professor Fung is also the co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment. 

Professor Fung was an editor of the Journal of Climate in 1996-98 and a contributing author to the Third and Fourth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  The contributions of this body were recognized by the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.  Professor Fung has played a pivotal role in compiling a joint report of the US National Academy of Sciences and the UK Royal Society on climate change. 

The scientific accomplishments of Professor Fung are succinctly summarized by the citation statements composed on the occasion of the award of the Roger Revelle Medal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) to her. Specifically, this citation praises her pioneering role in laying the ground work in the new field of biogeoscience, her ingenuity in combining theory and measurements to prescribe observational constraints on complex processes, and her unique ability to bridge the boundaries of separate sub disciplines in the traditional earth sciences. Professor Fung is also credited as the lead architect of computer simulations of the myriad interactions between the carbon cycle, other biogeochemical cycles, various physical components of the Earth System, and human society.