Education | UM to confer four honorary doctorates

The University of Macau (UM) will confer honorary doctorates on four distinguished individuals, Academician He Jingtang, Professor Henry T. Yang, Doctor Ada Yonath, and Professor Binglin Zhong, in recognition of their achievements and significant contributions to society and education.

The ceremony for the conferment of the honorary degrees will be held on November 11. At the ceremony, Academician He Jingtang and Henry T. Yang will receive the Doctor of Science honoris causa degree. Binglin Zhong will receive the Doctor of Education honoris causa degree. High-level degrees will also be presented at the ceremony. The Doctor of Science honoris causa degree for Doctor Ada Yonath will be conferred separately.

According to a press release issued by the UM yesterday, He has a passion for the exquisite South China Lingnan architectural features which he has been working hard to preserve since the 1960s.

Professor Yang is a world-renowned expert in structural engineering and the current chancellor of the University of California Santa Barbara. Yang is one of “the great educationists in higher education of the United States” acoording to the UM.

Doctor Yonath shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A Steitz for their studies on the structure and function of ribosomes, which are the tiny particles made up of RNA and proteins. These ribosomes specialize in protein synthesis and are found free from or bound to the endoplasmic matter within cells.

According to the UM, Zhong is a renowned educator having made significant contributions to the development of higher education and scientific research. He is currently the president of the Chinese Society of Education, an honorary vice president at Cardiff University, and a professor at Beijing Normal University. Professor Zhong has also served as the director-general of the Department of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education of China.