With a busy summer, didn’t get a chance to update and congratulate Desmond TAN and Julia LEUNG for completing their MPhils! Desmond has contributed tremendously to our knowledge of Hong Kong harvestmen–a truly understudied group, while Julia has helped develop new wildlife forensic techniques to differentiate wild and captive...

The Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fellowship is a competitive fellowship aiming to encourage the education and research of Hong Kong people. Congratulations to Desmond TAN for receiving it! This is a great acknowledgement of Desmond’s hard work to understand Hong Kong’s harvestmen biodiversity. Especially impressive because most winners do...

I had the honor of being interviewed by Ella Cheung of the Hong Kong Economic Journal culture section to talk about the trouble facing Hong Kong’s freshwater turtles. Helps a lot to have a professional reporter tell our story. Hope I have done justice for the turtles. As always,...

We had a busy two weeks of examinations for Sandy (Jan 10) and Henry (Jan 18). Both did a great job and passed with flying colors! Lots of hard work and stress, but both of you did it! Now with this checkpoint done, onto bigger and better things! Thanks...

After hours and hours of fieldwork, microscopy, drawing, and lab work, Desmond Tan’s first paper has been published! Adding much needed detail to the description of Heterobiantes geniculatus. You are setting a great standard for what is needed in a species description for harvestmen. Congrats Desmond! A great addition...

Today I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Phil Whelan and Dr. Merrin Pearse on The Brew on RTHK Radio 3. Although I am by no means an expert, we decided to chat about fungi since it was a new topic. Phil and Merrin were great at making...

After two years of hard work, Ivan Lam’s Mphil is done! Always great to celebrate, this time even more special because he is the first student where I was the main advisor. Ivan’s such a hard worker and so independent that he made my advising look good. I’m glad...

Congratulations to Desmond TAN on his successful grant to the Vincent Roth Fund for Systematics Research from the American Arachnological Society (AAS)! Desmond will be starting his MPhil soon to clarify harvestman biodiversity in Hong Kong. Not only has writing the proposal helped him refine his project, but now...

I had the honor to contribute to an article on eDNA approaches by Saugat Bolakhe. The article was just published in the Asian Scientist Magazine. Hopefully this will encourage more researchers and conservationists to explore using such approaches. https://www.asianscientist.com/2022/05/topnews/edna-emerging-technology-for-biodiversity-conservation/...