Victor and William Fung Foundation

The Fung Scholars Leadership Conference is an annual event for Fung Scholars and Fung Fellows to get together to learn, exchange ideas and connect to each other.

The Fung Scholars Leadership Conference 2018 was successfully held on 6-7 October 2018 at Hive in Hong Kong. The theme this year was “Innovation AI? Not AI”.  It was attended by 105 Fung Scholars and Fung Fellows from mainland China, UK, USA, Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong. The conference was kicked off with the welcoming remarks by Prof. Lap-Chee Tsui, President of Victor and William Fung Foundation, followed by a speech by Prof. Hau Lee, Thoma Professor of Operations, Information and Technology, Standard Graduate School of Business, Chairman of the Board of Fung Academy, Fung Group, on “The What, Who and How of innovations” and speech by Prof. Pascale Fung, Professor, Department of Electronic Engineering & Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, on “How can AI benefit our society?”.

Dr. Simon Leung, Vice Chairman, NetDragon Websoft Holdings Limited, Chairman, Edmodo, Inc. gave a speech on “To Teach or NOT to Teach” and Prof. Barbara Meynert, Board Member, Victor and William Fung Foundation, talked about “Impact of the AI Revolution on Work and Society”. The next session was a Panel Discussion facilitated by Mr. Kai-man Wong, Director, Victor and William Fung Foundation.

Dr. Victor Fung, Chairman, Victor and William Fung Foundation, gave a speech over lunch. After lunch was a popular session Entrepreneurship Seminar chaired by Prof. Barbara Meynert, who had a dialogue with speakers Mr. Bird Tang, Executive Director, Voltra, Mr. Ce Guo, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Koline Electronics, Mr. Lawrence Lui, Co-founder, Longevity Design House, and Mr. Nicholas Shekerdemian, Founder, Teaching by the Top, Co-founder, Headstart. The panelists shared their experience and tips on starting up their own business.

In the late afternoon, we were very excited to witness the final live pitches of the Fung Scholars Social Innovation Challenge. This challenge was the first collaboration between the Foundation and Fung Academy, to provide Fung Scholars a platform where they could share their business ideas. In the weeks leading up to the conference, Fung Scholars could post their ideas on the Fung Group’s crowdsourcing platform – The Kitchen. Experts in the field of social innovation selected the finalists from 31 entries. The finalists travelled from the UK, US and Singapore to give 5-minute pitches of their innovative ideas that create a positive social impact. It was a tough call for the judges of the session: Ada Wong, JP, Chairperson of MaD Institute, Howard Ling, Chief Consultant of Hong Kong Council of Social Service, Richard Kelly, Chief Catalyst at Fung Academy, and Prof. Lap-Chee Tsui, President of Victor and William Fung Foundation. Congratulations to Aileen Kearney for ‘Run the World – Increasing gender equality in athletics’ and Crystal Wang for ‘HELM: A 3D Scanner for Community-driven Global Heritage Preservation’ for taking home the Grand Prize (US$10,000) and Audience Favorite (US$2,000) respectively, to take their ideas to the next stage.