Shue Yan Interdisciplinary Research Platform Encourages Knowledge Transfer Across Disciplines
[Sponsored Article] On 15th November, Hong Kong Shue Yan University celebrated the successful conclusion of its first project under IDS, the Institutional Development Scheme, in which an interdisciplinary research platform has been established to bring bright and creative research ideas of interdisciplinary subjects to light.

[Sponsored Article]
On 15th November, Hong Kong Shue Yan University celebrated the successful conclusion of its first project under IDS, the Institutional Development Scheme, in which an interdisciplinary research platform has been established to bring bright and creative research ideas of interdisciplinary subjects to light. “This platform is a “space for growth and change”. All members in the Shue Yan community including teachers, students and alumni are encouraged to participate in the platform and learn from ample scholarly insights and interesting ideas in interdisciplinary research”, said Prof. Catherine Sun, Academic Vice President of Shue Yan. The platform operating since 2015 has a mission to promote interdisciplinary research in three main areas, namely Brain-Based Teaching and Learning, Decision-Making, and Negotiation and Persuasion. These areas involve the study of business, education, psychology and law, and are indeed the prominent fields in which Shue Yan has had considerable success in developing its competitive career-oriented programmes over the past forty-five years.

Being the first private university in Hong Kong, Shue Yan is driven first and foremost by a strong commitment to nurturing well-balanced and efficient young adults, who are able to combine academic knowledge with professional and practical skills. Accordingly, Shue Yan has strategically chosen ‘Brain-Based Teaching and Learning’ as its first-year theme of the IDS project, because it involves academics from diverse backgrounds to examine how the brains learn. Experts such as neuroscientists, language specialists, cognitive psychologists, and frontline educators from all disciplines providing direct teaching to students are gathered and ventured into this emerging and fascinating area of study. “In recent years, student-centred pedagogy is getting more important in higher education because it engages students in their own pursuit of academic excellence, and incorporates their interests and skills into the learning process. This proves to be crucial for their career development later in life. From the perspective of educators and researchers, by understanding the workings of students’ mind within the context of tertiary education, they can then work together to generate invaluable knowledge concerning the brain mechanisms of learning, and to translate this knowledge into creative, practical and evidence-based teaching pedagogy, thus maximizing students’ learning potential.” Prof. Sun explained.
While studying how the brains learn promotes quality education, by investigating how the brains make choices and decisions also broadens our conceptual knowledge in human behaviors and expressions. Shue Yan has selected ‘Decision-Making’ as its second-year theme to explore the neural correlates of decision-making. Contemporary neuroscientists believe that certain regions of animals and human brains are involved in their decision-making and risk-taking behaviors. These neural factors influence our choices and lead to different behavioral consequences which can be very bad, for instance, for addictions and obesity. Leveraging its new infrastructure such as the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Laboratory and the Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Laboratory, and research experts for conducting cognitive task analysis, Shue Yan is now able to collect empirical evidence on human judging processes, and further externalize the acquired knowledge in real-life situations to bring about socio-economic impact and improvements to the community and businesses.
