Grant Awards

2026 Wing Tat Lee Awards Announced

Please congratulate the recipients of the 2026 Wing Tat Lee awards, funded to enhance collaborations between the school and Chinese universities (with a preference for Hong Kong).

Thomas Clarke, PhD, assistant professor of pathology & laboratory medicine will collaborate with Professor Michael Huen at Hong Kong University to better understand the role of the histone modifying enzyme, Sirtuin 6, in DNA damage repair and genome stability maintenance. These studies will help define how defects in Sirtuin 6 biological function can impact a range of human disorders including several distinct types of cancer, as well as developmental and premature aging syndromes, paving the way for novel therapeutic strategies. 

Hui Feng, MD, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology, physiology & biophysics, will collaborate with Dr. Sizhou Huang at Chengdu Medical College and Dr. Lanfen Chen at Xiamen University, China, to study neuroblastoma, a cancer causing 15% of cancer-associated deaths among children. Studies will include how the tumor alters nutrient usage and tumor environment. This understanding can inform new therapeutic strategy to improve treatment outcomes.

Chao Zhang, PhD, assistant professor of computational biomedicine, will collaborate with Dr. Jiguang Wang, associate professor at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. They will develop a physics-informed deep learning framework to model cell relationships and temporal transitions, addressing limitations in biological conservation during data integration and advancing insights into brain aging and glioblastoma progression