Building a better society

Ruiqin Zhang, president of the Physical Society of Hong Kong.

By Michael Banks in Hong Kong

This morning I took Hong Kong’s metro to the City University of Hong Kong, where I met Ruiqin Zhang, who as well as being a solid-state physicist at the university is also president of the Physical Society of Hong Kong.

Over a lunch of dim sum, he told me how he is planning to boost the number of members of the society, which currently stands at around 120 researchers. He admits that the society is small, but that largely reflects the fact that there are just six universities in Hong Kong that have a physics department. Even so, he says that the society has the potential to add another 500 members.

To do so, he is planning an overhaul, including the launch of a new website – planned in the coming days – that will, among other things, aim to attract new members and help them organize meetings. He also plans to introduce a newsletter that will inform members of society matters, as well as create a fellow grade of membership. “We would like to see the society become more active,” says Zhang. “So that every member feels like they are a part of it.”

The society was set up in 1966 when there were only two universities in Hong Kong: the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Hong Kong. Zhang became president of the society in 2013 for a two-year term before he was re-elected for another term in 2015.

The society holds an annual one-day meeting, but starting this year this will become a two-day event and include speakers from outside Hong Kong.

“Hong Kong has an advantage in terms of culture and accessibility,” says Zhang. “We hope that the meeting can be a platform to foster collaboration not only within Hong Kong, but further afield as well.”