Dr. Alan Lam Hiu Fung was selected as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Persons by the Junior Chamber International Hong Kong in October 2015 for his innovation awards earned in international and regional technological competitions as well as his passion to promoting youth entrepreneurship.

Dr. Lam received his BEng, MPhil and PhD degrees all from the Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  

Dr. Lam, young entrepreneur, is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sengital Ltd.  He successfully led Sengital to join the Incubation Program of Science Park after graduation.  With his strong team, Sengital won the Grand Award and Gold Award of the 14th HKEIA Award for Outstanding Innovation and Technology Products - Consumer Electronics, Innovation and Creativity Award and Technological Achievement Award of 2013 Hong Kong Awards for Industries, Gold Award of 2014-2015 Hong Kong ICT Awards - Best Mobile Apps (Mobile Information).

He is active in both industry and academia.  He is the Board of Directors and ICT R&D Centre Technology Review Panel of ASTRI, ITSP Assessment Panel (Electronics) of Innovation and Technology Commission, Honorable Advisor of ISM-PRD and Steering Committee Member of HKPKI Forum. He established “Technology Incubation Network” (TIN), and association to provide a platform for collaboration among the Hong Kong industrial associations.  He supervised over 300 students over the past 10 years. 

As a distinguished alumnus and great supporter of CUHK, he has made significant contributions in serving the Advisory Board of the Faculty of Engineering, founding the Faculty of Engineering Alumni Association in 2013 to strengthen the connections with students, teachers and graduates, designing the first mentorship programme, and participating in the Faculty’s career sharing sessions to benefit exiting students.  He set an inspiring example to engineering students.

A genetic engineering team formed by 13 undergraduate students of science and engineering at CUHK has recently won a gold medal at the International Genetic Engineered Machine (iGEM) 2015 Giant World Jamboree held in Boston, USA. This is the fourth time that a CUHK team has won gold in the annual premier synthetic biology competition worldwide among, this year, more than 280 student-led teams from around the world. The winning project designed by the CUHK team has extensive potential applications and may even help solve the recent lead-in-water problem in the city. 

The winning project of the CUHK team was named ‘Magnetosome Forming Azotobacter vinelandii’. The students devised a synthetic biology system to generate magnetosome, a kind of biological magnetic particles with hundred times surface-to-volume ratio than the current nanoparticles, inside a soil bacterium called Azotobacter vinelandii under an intracellular anaerobic condition. This innovative system can absorb metals in contaminated waters and soils, thus making it useful to tackle marine pollution problem or the lead contamination problem affecting Hong Kong recently. Potentially, it can also be used to extract any protein or enzyme, and therefore may find its applications in, for instance, food and pharmaceutical industries. With nitrogenase added, the system can also be used to improve the efficiency of biological fuel cells. This project has been supported by the UGC Teaching Development Grant. 

For more information about the winning project, please click the link below:  http://2015.igem.org/Team:Hong_Kong-CUHK

About iGEM Competition  

iGEM is an annual premier synthetic biology competition worldwide for high school, undergraduate and postgraduate students.  It was established by the MIT in 2004 to foster students' learning in synthetic biology, promote collaboration among students and nurture biology talents.  Participating teams are required to specify, design, build, and test simple biological systems made from standard, interchangeable biological parts.  The accomplishments of these student teams often lead to important advances or provide solutions to tackle real-world problems in medicine, food and nutrition, energy, and the environment.  For more information, please visit www.igem.org.