PI: Kimberly Kay Hoang, Department of Sociology
Partner Organizations: TBD
This project offers a vital platform for stakeholders in East Asia and North America to engage in cross-cultural dialogue on disability and care justice and provides a timely opportunity to address common challenges and share best practices in the context of recent disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing geopolitical tensions. The PI will host a 2.5-day workshop. There will be three sessions with the themes “Voices” (of different parties), “Families and Communities,” and “Policies,” respectively. Every session will have presentations and roundtable discussions that allow for interdisciplinary, cross-community, and international dialogues. Then, the participants will spend half a day visiting various social service agencies and civil society organizations in Hong Kong to gain a situated understanding of the situations facing local people with disabilities, their families, and other caregivers. The final half day will be dedicated to reflections on the field visit and discussions of the next steps.
PI: Haryadi Gunawi, Department of Computer Science
Partner Organizations: Various
The recent establishment of data centers by major US technology companies in Indonesia provides a significant boost to local computer scientists, enabling them to engage deeply in large-scale systems research and contribute region-specific insights. To boost international research collaboration on open-sourced cloud computing and machine learning (ML) systems, Professor Haryadi Gunawi and Professor Yanjing Li will visit several top computer science departments in Indonesia and perform the following two-day activities: brainstorming sessions with the faculty on potential collaboration between Indonesian and UChicago systems researchers, a live seminar to faculty and students to advance their knowledge of today’s large-scale systems research, and a short hackathon to train students on using and deploying open cloud and ML software, producing meaningful graphical results, and packaging the experiments for sharing and repeatability.
PI: Eugene Raikhel, Department of Comparative Human Development
Partner Organization: Keio University, Tokyo
This project investigates East Asia's evolving responses to youth mental health crises, the adoption and adaptation of psychological practices, and the development of ‘indigenous’ therapies that offers a deep comparative insight into how different cultures approach mental health issues. The PI will hold a 2.5-day workshop at University of Chicago’s Hong Kong campus. The collaborators seek to convene 15-18 social science researchers and clinicians working on two parts of the world in which issues of youth mental health have been particularly acute: the US, Canada, and UK on the one hand, and East Asia on the other. In the workshop, participants will discuss research on youth and college mental health conducted in North America, the UK, and East Asia, to map out different historical trajectories, socio-political concerns, and technological changes that underlie the calls for college mental health interventions in each locale.
PI: Chien-Min Kao, Department of Radiology
Partner Organizations: University of Macau, The University of Hong Kong, Yale University
This proposed project arims to re-tune and update the more long-standing radiotheranostic methodologies from the new lessons learned in research and clinical practice. It also intends to develop synergistic and complementary research agenda in the relatively new, emerging, and up-coming future radiotheranostics for basic, translational, preclinical and clinical research, leading to changes of clinical practice for improved personalized medicine in a better future healthcare delivery system. The PI will organize a Project Working Committee with representatives from UChicago, University of Hong Kong (HKU), University of Macau (UM) and other partners, and initiate regular committee meetings held online, to explore, discuss and decide jointly the specific 2024-2025 project agenda to support such collaborative research. Investigators from UChicago, HKU, UM, and other partner institutions will also exploit opportunities when traveling to each other’s areas and/or attending relevant professional meetings to conduct in-person meetings to accelerate the progress of project agenda
PI: Richard Payne, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Partner Organization(s): TBD
In recent years, there has been extensive research on the Silk Road, tracing its significance from ancient trade routes during the Han dynasty to its modern use as a historical concept influencing contemporary projects and policies. This project aims to critically examine and correct these contemporary interpretations by exploring how ancient societies perceived and artistically represented the cultural and economic impacts of these transregional exchanges. The PI will host a workshop series to address question: How can an exploration of premodern trans-Asian exchange reinvigorate the “Silk Road” as a useful concept? The series will bring together scholars of the polities and cultures traditionally associated with the Silk Road in order to theorize premodern representations of the circulation of commodities and concepts within cosmopolitan economies.
PI: Judith Zeitlin, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Partner Organizations: Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing
This project intends to increase Hong Kong creative presence in the performing arts, to build on and further develop the UChicago Hong Kong Center's music and culture- related initiatives, and to help create interdisciplinary international artist-scholar-audience networks. The PI will hold a one-day workshop at the UChicago campus in Hong Kong. The collaborators will rehearse, perform, and record an excerpt from Ghost Village, a new opera in 3 acts, co-created by the PI, who crafted the libretto and conducted scholarly research, and YAO Chen, who composed for the opera. The story is based on an actual historical event: the early Qing dynasty’s bloody crackdown on a local revolt in Shandong in 1668. The performance and recording session will be open to invited guests. This will be followed by a roundtable discussion open to the public. The topic of the roundtable will be the creation of new operas/performance pieces based on premodern Chinese sources that speak to contemporary concerns, with Ghost Village as a case study.
PI: Hsiao-Wen Chen, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Partner Organization: The Chinese University of Hong Kong
This collaborative project between CUHK and UChicago provides astrophysics students in Hong Kong with invaluable exposure to advanced research in galaxy evolution. It will also expand the scope of the AMASE project, an ambitious all-sky survey project being launched by researchers at CUHK to efficiently map the diffuse matter in the cosmos, to include broader galactic phenomena. In scientific partnership with the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), The project aims to address key scientific questions in contemporary astrophysics research concerning how galaxies like the Milky Way acquire the gas necessary to fuel continuing star formation, as well as the impact of feedback from stars and supermassive black holes in regulating this process.
PI: Maanasa Raghavan, Human Genetics Graduate Program
Partner Organization: Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica
The Anyang project will shed valuable light on the genetic structure of the sacrificial human remains from the Xibeigang royal cemetery during the reign of the Late Shang dynasty. The project will also lead to the development of local capacity in Taiwan in this field and the reconstruction of the genetic past of Taiwan. This project, with researchers from the Institute of History and Philology (IHP), Academia Sinica (AS), will investigate human remains from a sacrificial context that were recovered from the Xibeigang royal cemetery at Anyang, the last Shang dynasty capital (ca. 1200-1000 BCE). Genetic data will be generated from a smaller set of ~20-30 individuals to ascertain preservation of DNA. Then, population genetics analyses will be employed to understand the genetic variation represented among the sacrificed individuals as a means of reconstructing past societal practices at Anyang during this period.
PI: Alan Yu, Department of Linguistics
Partner Organization: CUHK
In recent decades, Hong Kong has become increasingly diversified demographically, culturally, and linguistically. The continual exchange among different languages and cultures has the potential to seriously impact language development and learning, language vitality and attribution, as well as language use and change in the local communities. This project will investigate ongoing language variation and change in Cantonese at a large scale by creating a mobile app developed for crowdsourcing speech data and survey responses to tightly controlled metalinguistic judgment questions of Cantonese and sharing insights about language variation with the public. The AI-powered mobile app project will make it possible to reach populations that were difficult or costly to access in normal research settings. Results from this study can also inform funding bodies how to better allocate resources to proposals that can be more effectively promote the vitality of Cantonese in general, and the learning of Cantonese as a second language, particularly by NCS minorities and immigrant children from the mainland or even as the native language of local Chinese children.
PI: Eugene Chang, Department of Medicine
Partner Organizations: Kyorin University, Asahikawa Medical University, CUHK, National Taiwan University
The project aims to analyze the metabolites present in the stool of the genetically- and culturally distinct populations of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, as compared to the US. The project’s metabolomics studies also have the potential to transform clinical practice by providing medical professionals with an early glimpse into changes into one’s health before a condition becomes too severe to be reversed or cured. The PI will establish dialogue and partnerships with major medical centers in Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan to develop population/geographic-specific markers and reference ranges for panels that measure the state of health of the gut microbiome. In addition, the PI will also hold a public educational symposium about the Gut Microbiome and Health for the Hong Kong audience.