Articles

The Harvard Graduate School Alumni Association
cordially invites you to a luncheon and panel discussion

CHINA COMPETITIVENESS AND
THE ROLE OF HONG KONG

Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - 12 noon
The Conrad Hotel - Pacific Place, 88 Queensway, Hong Kong

Moderated by John Fan, PhD '72, Chairman and Founder of Kopin Corporation

Panelists:
Victor Fung, PhD '71
Group Chairman, Li and Fung Group
Shing-Tung Yau
William Casper Graustein Professor of Mathematics, Harvard University
Director of the Tsinghua Mathematical Sciences Center
Michael Enright, AB ’80, MBA ’86, PhD ’91
Sun Hung Kai Professor, School of Business of the University of Hong Kong; Director of the Asia-Pacific Competitiveness Program, Hong Kong Institute of Economics and Business Strategy

Hosted by:
Allan M. Brandt, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Lee Zhang, AM ’01 in Medical Sciences;
Chairman and CEO of iKang Guobin Healthcare Group

Space at the luncheon is limited. 
Please respond via e-mail to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to reserve your spot.

Speaker Biographies

JOHN C. C. FAN

John C.C. Fan, PhD ’72, applied sciences, is chairman, CEO, and president of Kopin Corporation, a NASDAQ public company since 1992. Kopin, headquartered in Taunton, Massachusetts, is a leading provider of HBT power transistor wafers and small-format active matrix liquid crystal displays for wireless communications and other mobile devices. Fan began his career at the MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, where he researched semiconductor materials and devices. He was leading the Electronic Materials Group at Lincoln Laboratory when he left MIT in 1985 to found Kopin Corporation. Fan has authored over 200 publications, edited three books, and owns over 50 issued patents, with more patents pending.

VICTOR FUNG

Victor Fung is Group Chairman of Li and Fung Group. He also is Chairman of the Greater Pearl River Delta Business Council, the Hong Kong Airport Authority and the Hong Kong University Council.
Dr. Fung holds a number of civic and professional appointments. He is a member of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and the Hong Kong Government Judicial Officers Recommendation Committee. He also is Chairman of Hong Kong - Japan Business Co-operation Committee. From 1991 to 2000, Dr. Fung was Chairman of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council and from 1996 to 2003, he was the Hong Kong representative on the APEC Business Advisory Council.

Dr. Fung is Chairman, Asian Advisory Board of Prudential Financial Inc and a non-executive Director of Bank of China (Hong Kong) Limited, PCCW Ltd, Orient Overseas (International) Ltd and Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd.

In 1995, Dr. Fung was voted Businessman of the Year under the Hong Kong Business Awards Scheme for his success as an entrepreneur and for his contribution to Hong Kong's economic development. He also was chosen Hong Kong Leader of the Year in 1998. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1993 in recognition for his commitment to public service. In 1997, the University of Hong Kong conferred upon him an Honorary Doctorate Degree of Laws and in 2001 he was awarded the Harvard Medal for outstanding service to Harvard University. In 2003, the Hong Kong Government awarded Dr. Fung the Gold Bauhinia Star for distinguished service to the community.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Dr. Fung holds Bachelor and Master Degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Doctorate in Business Economics from Harvard University. He also taught as a professor at the Harvard Business School for four years before returning to Hong Kong in 1976.

SHING-TUNG YAU

Shing-Tung Yau has made fundamental contributions to differential geometry which have influenced a wide range of scientific disciplines, including astronomy and theoretical physics. With Richard Schoen, Yau solved a longstanding question in Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity by proving that the sum of the energy in the universe is positive; their proof has provided an important tool for understanding how black holes form. In 1982 Yau was awarded the Fields Medal, the highest award in mathematics, and in 1994 he shared with Simon Donaldson of Oxford University the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Society, in recognition of his “development of nonlinear techniques in differential geometry leading to the solution of several outstanding problems.”

Yau was born in 1949 in Swatow, in southern China, the fifth of the eight children of Chen Ying Chiou and Yeuk-Lam Leung Chiou. Within the year, Communists had overthrown the government and the family fled to Hong Kong, where his father, a respected economist and philosopher, obtained a position at a college which would later be part of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His mother knitted and created other goods by hand to help support the family, for professors were poorly paid. He credits his father, who died when Yau was fourteen, with encouraging him to study mathematics, and he has retained a passion for it: “It’s clean, clear-cut, beautiful, and has a lot of applications,” he told the Harvard Gazette. Yau entered Chung Chi College in Hong Kong, earning his undergraduate degree in 1968. One of his professors had attended the University of California at Berkeley and suggested that Yau study there. A fellowship from the International Business Machines Corp. (now IBM) made it possible; Yau studied with Shiing-Shen Chern, the legendary geometer (Yau would later edit a collection of papers honoring his teacher). Yau completed his doctorate in mathematics in 1971 at the age of twenty-two.

In the late 1970’s, Yau proved the Calabi conjecture in differential geometry. At first, Yau’s technically astounding proof provided pure mathematicians with a gigantic catalogue of new solutions to Einstein’s equations for the gravitational field in an even dimensional manifold. Then, in 1985, theoretical physicists realized that Yau's solutions were building blocks for the theory of superstrings, as explained in the book The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene. Almost overnight, Yau’s work became the central focus in a huge and unprecedented collaboration between mathematicians and physicists.

Differential geometry, which is Yau’s field, was developed during the 1800’s, and it uses derivatives and integrals to describe geometric objects such as surfaces and curves. Differential geometry is particularly concerned with geometrical calculations across many dimensions. The simplest kind of geometry would be one- and two-dimensional, analyzing figures such as squares or circles; the geometry of a three-dimensional figure, such as a cube or a cylinder, is more complicated. Differential geometry is primarily concerned with calculations about geometrical figures in four or more dimensions. An example of a four- dimensional figure would be a three-dimensional one that changes over time—the stretching and snapping of a rubber band, for instance, or a drop of water splashing on a surface. One of the most important applications of differential geometry is Einstein’s theory of relativity: Einstein used differential geometry in his original calculations, and it was central to his theory of gravity. The general theory of relativity includes a conjecture—that is, an unproven postulate—which proposes that in an isolated physical system the total energy, including gravity and matter, would be positive. Called the positive mass conjecture, this was fundamental to the theory of relativity, but no one had been able to prove it.

Yau’s first major contribution to differential geometry was his proof of another conjecture, called the Calabi conjecture, which concerns how volume and distance can be measured not in four, but in five or more dimensions. In 1979 Yau and Richard Schoen proved Einstein’s positive mass conjecture by applying methods devised by Yau. The proof was based on their work with minimal surfaces. A minimal surface is one in which a small deformation creates a surface with a larger area—soap films are often used as an example of minimal surfaces. The mathematical equations that must be used to describe minimal surfaces differ from those used for most problems in differential geometry. The latter use differential equations to describe curves and surfaces, while mathematicians working with minimal surfaces use partial, nonlinear differential equations, which are far more difficult to work with. Shoen and Yau's proof analyzed how such surfaces behave in space and time and showed that Einstein had correctly defined mass. Their methods allowed for the development of a new theory of minimal surfaces in higher dimensions, and they have had an impact on topology, algebraic geometry, and general relativity.

MICHAEL ENRIGHT

Called “one of the world’s leading strategy gurus” by The Academy of International Business, Michael Enright is the Sun Hung Kai Professor at the School of Business of the University of Hong Kong; Director of the Asia-Pacific Competitiveness Program at the Hong Kong Institute of Economics and Business Strategy; Director of Enright, Scott & Associates, an economic and strategic consulting firm; and a Non-Executive Director of Johnson Electric Holdings. Professor Enright’s work focuses on international business strategy and regional competitiveness. He has advised leading corporations and governments in more than 20 nations on core strategies, China strategies, Asia-Pacific strategies, global strategies, and development strategies. He has appeared in 37 nations as a keynote speaker.

Enright's work has appeared in the Harvard Business Review, WorldLink, the Far Eastern Economic Review, Asian Business, Asia Inc, the South China Morning Post, the Business Times, the Yale China Review, the Journal of International Business Studies, Management International Review, and many others. It also has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Asian Wall Street Journal, the South China Morning Post, the Straits Times, Business Times, The Economist, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Fortune, The New York Review of Books, and many others. His books include China Into the Future: Making Sense of the World’s Most Dynamic Economy, Wiley 2008 and Regional Powerhouse: The Greater Pearl River Delta and the Rise of China, Wiley 2005. Before moving to Asia in 1996, Enright was based at Harvard, where he received his AB, MBA, and PhD degrees, and where he spent six years on the Strategy Faculty of the Harvard Business School.