The Baton in Five Hands: Tracing HKUST’s Leadership Succession from Woo Chia-wei to the Present

# The Baton in Five Hands: Tracing HKUST's Leadership Succession from Woo Chia-wei to the Present

In a sentence: From its opening in 1991 through July 2026, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has had five Vice-Chancellors and Presidents and six Council Chairmen; the recruitment path for the presidency shifted from the first three appointees hired from overseas to the two most recent promoted from within the University.

A Council announcement at the end of March, a resignation notice submitted eleven months in advance, a global search spanning half a year—every transition at the helm of HKUST is never a quiet handover on the first day of term, but a string of documented dates with a traceable paper trail. This piece does not reprise the biographies and achievements of each individual (those are covered in the profiles within Governance Structure and Successive Leaders (Part I)^※). Instead, it focuses the lens on how the baton was passed: who announced what on which date, from which day it took effect, how much time elapsed in between, what selection process was followed, and—on the parallel track of the Council Chairmanship—how a mid-term death in office was bridged by an acting arrangement. This is a succession dossier organised around the pivot points of each handover.

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# Five Presidents, Six Chairmen: A Master Table of Handover Junctures

Let us begin by laying out the skeleton of both lines. Unlike the table in Governance Structure and Successive Leaders (Part II)^※, which is arranged to show who was in each position at a given time, the table below is organised around the act of handing over itself. Each row represents one pass of the baton, with the announced and effective dates noted.

The six successions on the Council Chairman line (Chung Sze-yuen → Lo Ka-shui → John Chan Cho-chak → Marvin Cheung Kin-tung → Andrew Liao Cheung-sing → Harry Shum Heung-yeung) are detailed with their milestones and biographies in Governance Structure and Successive Leaders (Part II)^※; this piece will only supplement one procedural detail glossed over earlier—the acting arrangement following a chairman's death in office in 2014. This table already reveals two main threads. First, a clear watershed exists in HKUST's presidential succession: all three appointments before 2018 were recruited from overseas academia, while from 2018 onwards, two consecutive appointments have gone to senior internal figures. Second, the "effective dates" of the five handovers are not uniform; the first three all fell on 1 September, the turn of the academic year, yet the fifth took effect in mid-October—a rhythm disrupted by an early departure. We will now examine each juncture in detail.

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# A Chronicle of Handover Points: A Timeline from 1986 to 2026

The most direct way to read this dossier is to merge all the handover nodes from both the presidential and Council Chairman lines into a single chronological spine. The chronicle below records only the relay actions themselves—who came on, who stepped down, who was renewed, who acted up—gathering the scattered nodes into one timeline for a year-by-year comparison:

• 1986 — Chung Sze-yuen begins chairing the HKUST Planning Committee; the first baton on the governance line is grasped a full five years before the University opens.
• 1988 — Chung Sze-yuen becomes the founding Council Chairman; the governance line officially starts (three years ahead of the executive line).
• 1991 — HKUST opens; Woo Chia-wei is inaugurated as founding Vice-Chancellor and President; the two founders jointly unveil the University.
• 1999 — First change of Council Chairman; Chung Sze-yuen → Lo Ka-shui; Chung transitions to Chairman of the Court and Pro-Chancellor.
• November 2000 — Paul Ching-wu Chu is announced as the second President (the University Grants Committee congratulates him the same day), entering a roughly nine-month designate period.
• 2001 — Paul Chu takes office on 1 September, Woo Chia-wei steps down; Council Chairmanship passes from Lo Ka-shui to John Chan Cho-chak; both the presidential and chairman lines see nearly simultaneous changes.
• 2002 — John Chan formally assumes the Council Chairmanship (April).
• 2008 — Council Chairman John Chan → Marvin Cheung; Chan transitions into the Court system.
• 2009 — Paul Chu retires in August; Tony F. Chan assumes office as the third President on 1 September. A rare year of concurrent transitions on both the presidential and chairman lines.
• September 2013 — Tony F. Chan is reappointed, his term extended to 2019 (a "baton renewal" node).
• September 2014 — Council Chairman Marvin Cheung dies in office; Deputy Chairman Henry Tang Ying-yen serves as Acting Chairman (the sole instance of an acting arrangement to fill a gap).
• March 2015 — Andrew Liao is appointed Council Chairman by the Chief Executive, ending the acting arrangement.
• January 2018 — Wei Shyy is announced as the fourth President (the first case of internal promotion); takes office 1 September, Tony F. Chan steps down at the end of August and moves to KAUST.
• 9 November 2021 — Wei Shyy informs the Council he will step down early the following year, triggering the longest resignation notice period.
• 2022 — Nancy Ip is appointed in May and takes office on 19 October as the fifth President (first female President, second case of internal promotion); the same year, the HKUST(GZ) campus opens and Wei Shyy steps down on the same day.
• March 2023 — Council Chairman Andrew Liao → Harry Shum; Liao transitions to Chairman of the Court.
• March 2025 — Founding President Woo Chia-wei passes away, aged 87.
• January 2026 — Harry Shum is announced as reappointed Council Chairman for a new term lasting until 2029.

Reading through this chronicle, the "staggered" rhythm of the two lines is plain: apart from 2001 and 2008–2009, when presidential and chairman transitions occurred reasonably close together, in most years only one line moves while the other remains constant—this is precisely the basic cadence by which HKUST's governance layer maintains continuity. The sections below zoom in on the key milestones along this timeline.

# How Was the Presidential Baton Passed? A Breakdown of Five Handover Junctures

# 1991: Assuming Office at the Founding, a Start with No Predecessor

The first President, Woo Chia-wei, is the only leader who had no predecessor to receive the baton from—what he inherited was not an office but a blank slate. According to the University's obituary, his founding credo was "Creating, not replicating,"^※ building the strategy, curriculum, and governance structure from scratch (for the full origins, see Pre-History and Naming of HKUST^※). According to English Wikipedia, he became President of San Francisco State University in 1983, the first Chinese-American to lead a major university in the United States.^※ He was subsequently recruited to return to Hong Kong to establish HKUST and served from 1991 to 2001, making his the longest presidential term to date.

However, if we consider "who was in place first" as part of the relay, Woo Chia-wei was not actually the earliest figure to take his position in HKUST's governance lineage. According to the University's obituary, founding patriarch Chung Sze-yuen had been chairing the HKUST Planning Committee since 1986 and became the founding Council Chairman in 1988^※—meaning the first baton on the governance line (Council Chairman) was grasped even earlier than the first baton on the executive line (the President). At the moment of opening, a Council Chairman who had been in preparation for several years and a founding President freshly returned from the United States jointly inaugurated the University. HKUST's two relay lines did not start simultaneously from the outset; the governance line led, and the executive line followed. For this succession dossier, the significance of the founding juncture lies precisely in this: it both set the "external hire" precedent that would endure for over twenty years—handing the first baton to a Chinese-American university leader who had already matured in the U.S. system—and planted the earliest seed of the "staggered start, staggered handover" pattern between the two lines.

# 2001: Woo Chia-wei → Paul Ching-wu Chu, the First Academic-Year Handoff

The first true baton-passing occurred in 2001, but its "announcement date" actually traces back to the end of 2000. According to a UGC release, Paul Ching-wu Chu's appointment was publicly congratulated by the official body as early as 22 November 2000^※; according to English Wikipedia, he formally succeeded Woo Chia-wei as the second President on 1 September 2001^※. The gap between announcement and assumption of office was about nine months—the first documented "notice period" in HKUST's history, indicating that as early as 2000, the University was already using the practice of announcing its top appointment nearly a year in advance, leaving ample transition time, rather than changing leaders abruptly at the academic year boundary.

This effective date, set on 1 September right at the new academic year's start, subsequently became the default cadence for HKUST's presidential handovers—the effective dates for the third and fourth Presidents would also fall on 1 September. Before taking the baton, Paul Chu, according to English Wikipedia, had long headed the Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston^※, an internationally top-tier superconductivity physicist, continuing the path of seeking a leader from among senior overseas academics. In its congratulatory statement, the UGC expressed the expectation that under his leadership, HKUST would further develop into one of the finest universities in the region. After this baton was passed, HKUST moved from its founding phase into a period of rapid ascent in international rankings; Paul Chu served a full term of roughly eight years, until his retirement and handover in 2009.

# 2009: Paul Chu → Tony F. Chan, an Announcement with a Five-Month Notice Period

The information surrounding the second handover is the most complete, because it left behind an announcement datable to the exact day. According to an official HKUST press release, the Council announced on 31 March 2009 the appointment of Tony F. Chan as the next President, effective 1 September 2009, succeeding Paul Chu, who would retire in August of that year^※. The interval from the 31 March announcement to the 1 September effective date was about five months—this notice period, when the decision was public but the new leader had not yet taken office, is the first clearly documented transition buffer in HKUST's public records.

The announcement also preserved statements from both sides of the handover. The then Council Chairman, Marvin Cheung, described Tony Chan in the release as:

"Prof Chan is a rare breed among academics: he is a visionary leader, a pre-eminent scholar and scientist, and a world-class administrator." (Official HKUST release)^※

The outgoing Paul Chu, in the same release, stated that Tony Chan was exactly the leader HKUST needed to move towards even greater excellence. This gesture of "the incumbent president endorsing the successor" is itself a form of handover ritual—the outgoing leader publicly backing the incoming one is a common feature in HKUST's succession announcements. The incoming President, Tony F. Chan, had previously served, according to English Wikipedia, as Assistant Director of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate at the U.S. National Science Foundation, overseeing one of the foundation's largest divisions^※. He was still an external hire from overseas—this was the third consecutive time HKUST had recruited its chief executive from the overseas academic world, and it would be the last time this practice was followed.

This juncture also plants a seed regarding "renewal." After taking office in 2009, Tony Chan did not serve just one term. According to an official HKUST release, the Council announced on 11 September 2013 that he would continue as President for another term, extending his tenure to 2019^※—meaning that, from 2009 to 2019, the conditions were in place for him to hold the presidency for a full decade. The thread of "first term → renewal," read against the outcome of his eventual early departure in 2018, constitutes a key case study in the "Reappointment Nodes" section later in this piece.

# 2018: Tony F. Chan → Wei Shyy, the End of the External-Hire Practice and the Internal-Promotion Turning Point

The third handover marks the turning point of the entire relay. According to the official HKUST release, the Council appointed Wei Shyy as the fourth President, effective 1 September 2018, succeeding Tony F. Chan who would step down on 31 August of that year^※; this release was issued in January 2018, giving a notice period of over seven months—longer than in 2009. The true watershed lies not in the timing but in the candidate's origin: Wei Shyy was not a parachute hire from overseas but HKUST's own number two figure. According to the same release, he was previously the University's Executive Vice-President and Provost and, before joining HKUST in August 2010, had been Chair of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor^※.

Promoting the Provost to President meant that, for the first time, HKUST handed its top executive post to someone who had already been operating at a senior level within the University for years—he joined HKUST in 2010, was elevated to Executive Vice-President and Provost in 2013, oversaw the four-year undergraduate curriculum reform (detailed in The Four-Year Curriculum Reform and the Common Core^※), and was thoroughly versed in the University's internal workings. After this baton pass, the "external-hire convention" drew to a close, and "internal promotion" became the new normal. The release states that Wei Shyy's selection also involved a rigorous global search, led by a Search Committee with the support of an independent search firm, which also took into account the University community's expectations for the key attributes of the new President^※—meaning that even though the final candidate came from within, the selection process was still an open global competition; internal promotion and external hire cleared the same procedural hurdle.

From a handover-node perspective, the 2018 baton pass also features an easily overlooked time gap: Wei Shyy had already assumed office and full authority on 1 September, but his formal installation did not take place until the 26th Congregation in November of that year—a distinction between the "assumption of office" date and the "installation ceremony" date that this piece will clarify in a later section. When Wei Shyy took the baton, HKUST was at a critical phase in planning the Guangzhou campus; the most significant milestone of his tenure was precisely the official opening of HKUST(GZ) in 2022, which also became the rationale for his subsequent decision to hand over early.

# 2022: Wei Shyy → Nancy Ip, the Longest Notice Period, Stretched by an Early Departure

The fourth handover has the most unusual rhythm of the five, because it was triggered by a resignation notice submitted in advance. According to an official HKUST release, Wei Shyy informed the Council on 9 November 2021 that he would step down on 19 October 2022^※, roughly a year before the end of his originally scheduled five-year term (which would have ended in 2023). From this notice to his actual departure, the notice period stretched to about eleven months—the longest buffer in any of the five handovers—and directly pushed the effective date away from the customary 1 September to mid-October. According to a contemporaneous South China Morning Post report^※, the resignation letter promptly triggered a global search for a successor. The official release offered no specific reason beyond stating that after personally witnessing the completion of the Guangzhou campus, he felt it was an opportune moment to pass the torch; this piece reports that faithfully without speculation.

The selection result for his successor was announced six months later. According to an official release, the Council unanimously approved the appointment of Nancy Ip as the fifth President on 20 May 2022, also effective 19 October 2022^※—the effective date of succession was precisely aligned with the effective date of departure, achieving a seamless handover: the last day of Wei Shyy's tenure was the first day of Nancy Ip's, and the office of the President was not vacant for a single day. From the 20 May announcement to the 19 October assumption of office, Nancy Ip experienced about a five-month period as "president-designate," a transitional arrangement familiar from her predecessors, Wei Shyy and Tony Chan alike—announcement first, a designate period, then formally taking the baton.

According to the same release, she joined HKUST in 1993 and had served as Head of the Department of Biochemistry (2000), Dean of the School of Science (2011), and Vice-President for Research and Development (2016) before being appointed President^※. She is the first female President in HKUST's history and the first to be cultivated entirely through the University's internal research ranks, rising step by step to the top executive post—from department head to dean, to vice-president, to President, she climbed every rung of the University's administrative ladder. The then Council Chairman, Andrew Liao, described the choice in the release as combining the qualities of an outstanding scientist, a seasoned university administrator, and a home-grown leader. Like Wei Shyy's installation, her formal installation ceremony did not take place on the day she assumed office, but roughly a month later, at the 30th Congregation in November of that year—the moment when the University's first female President was formally installed. This baton pass continued and reinforced the "internal promotion" path established in 2018, turning "home-grown" from a one-off experiment into a pattern spanning two consecutive terms.

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# What Stage Was the University At with Each Handover?

When the five handover junctures are placed back into the sequence of HKUST's development, the University was at a different stage at each pass—and the challenges facing the incoming President were correspondingly distinct. This "node-to-stage" mapping is a key to understanding why a particular background was favoured at a particular time.

The logic this mapping reveals is this: during the founding and reputation-building phase (the first three Presidents), the University tended to recruit academics already enjoying international renown from overseas, leveraging external stature to endorse a young institution. As it moved into a phase of expanding its footprint and reaching institutional maturity (the two most recent Presidents), HKUST pivoted towards appointing internal leaders already intimately familiar with the place and capable of executing established strategies to completion. The professional backgrounds of the incoming leaders also broadened from "pure basic sciences" (physics, superconductivity, mathematics) to "engineering and life sciences" (aeronautical engineering, neuroscience)—mirroring HKUST's later strategic push into deep tech and medicine. It should be noted that this is a structural observation drawn from public CVs and official announcements, not an official periodisation. The candidate chosen at any given node was also subject to the multiple contingencies of available talent pools and selection outcomes and should not be read as a pre-planned route.

# How Does HKUST Select a President? The Three-Part Selection Mechanism

When placed side by side, the five handovers reveal a stable, three-part selection procedure that has become increasingly visible in the announcements of the two most recent appointments. According to the 2018 announcement for Wei Shyy and the 2022 announcement for Nancy Ip, the procedural points are consistent:

According to Nancy Ip's appointment announcement, this process took several months, was conducted by a Search Committee with the assistance of an independent search firm, incorporated the "ideal presidential attributes" expressed by students, staff, and alumni in an online survey, filtered candidates through multiple rounds of interviews from a globally qualified pool, and ultimately submitted a recommendation to the Council^※. The final destination of the process is the Council—in the verifiable votes among the five appointments, multiple decisions were concluded "unanimously," including for Tony F. Chan in 2009^※ and Nancy Ip in 2022^※.

Breaking this procedure down into steps, the sequence is roughly: a Search Committee, together with an independent executive search firm, first defines a global candidate pool; the list is narrowed through several rounds of interviews; concurrently, an online survey is used to solicit from staff, students, and alumni the "qualities a new President should possess"; and finally, the committee submits its recommended candidate to the Council for a vote. According to the 2022 selection process, the desired attributes collected through the survey included dimensions such as leadership ability, strategic vision, the capacity to be a voice for higher education, and the ability to drive innovation—these items more or less sketch the public expectations HKUST holds for its President. This "Committee + headhunter + stakeholder survey + Council final approval" combination, which separates professional scouting, public opinion, and the final decision into distinct stages, is a rather distinctive feature of HKUST's selection process.

One point worth noting: even when the final choice falls on an internal candidate (as with Wei Shyy and Nancy Ip), the University still runs the full global search—"internal promotion" is an outcome of global competition, not an internal appointment that bypasses procedure. The fact that both announcements emphasise a "global search" makes this clear. The stakeholder online survey, for its part, places the opinions of staff, students, and alumni at the front end, at the very start of the search; and the desired attributes listed in the questionnaire are, in a sense, the public "job description" entrusted to each incoming President.

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# External Hire or Internal Promotion? The Watershed Line Drawn in 2018

If the five Presidents are categorised by "where they came from," the clearest structural change in HKUST's governance lineage is the wholesale shift in the recruitment pathway in 2018 from "external hire from overseas" to "internal promotion."

The common denominator for the first three is that all had reached a very senior level in the U.S. academic or research-management system before being recruited back to Hong Kong: Woo Chia-wei had led a major American university, Paul Chu had directed a top-tier superconductivity research centre, and Tony F. Chan had managed one of the largest divisions of the U.S. National Science Foundation. This pattern fit the circumstances of HKUST's founding era, when it was "starting from zero and in need of international prestige as an endorsement"—using a leader already validated overseas to rapidly build credibility and networks for a young university.

Wei Shyy taking the baton in 2018 marks a pivot in this logic. Both he and Nancy Ip accumulated many years within HKUST, holding senior vice-presidential roles before becoming President: Wei Shyy, as Provost, had spearheaded curriculum reform; Nancy Ip, who joined HKUST in 1993, had been at the core of the University's research echelons for over three decades. The shift from "borrowing external prestige to establish the University" to "relying on an internal leadership pipeline to sustain it" marks, to some extent, HKUST's evolving self-perception as it moved from the start-up phase into institutional maturity—a university beginning to trust that people it had cultivated were capable of steering the ship. Again, this is a structural observation drawn from public records, not an official periodising narrative by the University; the origin of a candidate is influenced by many factors, including the available talent and selection outcomes at the time, and should not be over-causalised.

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# How Long is a Term? The Ledger of Five Tenure Lengths

Beyond the recruitment pathway, another dimension that reveals structural patterns is "how long each served." Laying out the lengths of the five presidential tenures shows a curve that is long at first, then short, and now marked as "ongoing."

The first three tenures were all quite long—Woo Chia-wei at about ten years, Paul Chu about eight, Tony F. Chan about nine—the three together covering the vast majority of the University's first twenty-seven years. These three long terms ran in parallel with the "external hire from overseas" model: a senior academic recruited from abroad would typically serve a full term, or even two, providing stable helm for a university in its founding and ascending phases. With Wei Shyy, the tenure contracted sharply to about four years—but this was not a matter of institutional design; it was the result of his voluntarily handing over the baton roughly a year earlier than scheduled (according to the official release, he had an original term until 2023 but chose to step down in 2022 after the Guangzhou campus was completed^※). In other words, the "length" of the first three tenures was the length of completing, and even renewing, a full term; Wei Shyy's "shortness" was the shortness of an early departure—the two should not be crudely lined up as a "shrinking tenure" trend but rather viewed as different outcomes produced by the same flexible tenure system, which allows both reappointment and early departure, applied to different individuals. Tony Chan's reappointment extended to 2019, yet he left for KAUST in 2018; Wei Shyy could have served until 2023, yet handed over in 2022. These two cases precisely illustrate that while the upper limit of a term is set at the time of appointment, the actual length of service is often rewritten by the President's own next move.

# Two "Unfinished" Terms: Echoes Between 2018 and 2022

Within this succession dossier, one category of node deserves to be singled out—when a President departs ahead of schedule while still holding a valid mandate and unexpired term. In the past decade, HKUST has seen exactly two such cases, which echo each other.

The first was Tony F. Chan. According to an official announcement, he was reappointed in 2013 for a term extending to 2019^※, which would have allowed him to serve a full decade; however, he stepped down from HKUST in August 2018, moving on to become President of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), according to English Wikipedia^※—effectively passing the baton early with roughly a year left on his mandate. The second was Wei Shyy. According to the official release, he had an original five-year term until 2023, but stepped down early in October 2022^※, roughly a year ahead of schedule; the official line was that he felt it was the right moment to pass the torch after personally witnessing the Guangzhou campus's completion, with no further explanation given for the early departure.

The two cases are four years apart but trace a common pattern: the actual length of an HKUST President's tenure is often determined not by the term limit set at appointment but rewritten by the President's own next chapter—Tony Chan departed for another university's summons, Wei Shyy left upon the completion of a milestone. This also explains why, in the earlier table of tenure lengths, Wei Shyy's "roughly 4 years" should not be read as "tenures are getting shorter": it is the result of an early departure, not a policy decision to shorten terms. For a dossier organised around handover moments, these two "unfinished" departures are precisely the two observation points where the gap between "term limit" and "actual length of service" is most visible. The Wild History section of this site offers separately compiled, multi-source accounts of topics like early presidential departures; see University Governance and Reform^※. This section merely presents facts from public announcements without drawing inferences.

# How Long is the Notice? The Buffer Between Announcement Day and Effective Day

An easily overlooked yet telling dimension of governance maturity in a succession dossier is the notice period between the "announcement date" and the "effective date"—it reflects how much buffer the institution builds into a leadership transition. Arranging the verifiable handovers by this measure:

A common denominator across the four verifiable handovers is that the notice periods are measured in "months"; not a single one was a last-minute substitution under fire. According to the UGC's congratulatory statement of 22 November 2000, Paul Chu's appointment was announced about nine months before it took effect. The subsequent three handovers saw notice periods of about five months (2009) and over seven months (2018), while the 2022 case, triggered by Wei Shyy's nearly one-year advance notice, stretched the resignation warning to about eleven months—the longest of the four. This interval has not lengthened uniformly each time (2009 was actually the shortest), but in every instance, it gave the University a buffer to "announce first, then search or hand over." The 2021–2022 transition, in particular, adopted a phased cadence: "resignation notice first, successor search second, seamless handover at the end." Wei Shyy gave notice in November 2021, his successor Nancy Ip was confirmed only in May 2022, and his last day in office was precisely matched by her first day on 19 October. For the founding handover in 1991, since there was no predecessor to hand over from and so much time has elapsed, this piece lists only the effective year and refrains from retroactively supplying an announcement date, to avoid substituting speculation for fact.

A side observation: of the five handovers, only the 2022 one did not fall on the academic year boundary of 1 September; it was pushed to 19 October by an early departure. The precise alignment of successor Nancy Ip's assumption date with Wei Shyy's departure date demonstrates that even when the rhythm was disrupted, the University prioritised a "seamless handover with no vacancy."

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# The "President-Designate": The Overlap Window Before a Handover

Recurring across HKUST's handover junctures is a transitional identity easily overlooked—the "president-designate." This refers to the period after a candidate has been announced by the Council but before the effective date arrives. This window is not a vacuum; it is an overlap period where "the title is conferred but authority has not yet transferred," allowing the incoming leader to familiarise themselves with the landscape and the University to achieve an orderly transition.

Take the two instances with the most precisely known dates: Tony F. Chan was announced on 31 March 2009, effective 1 September^※, a designate window of about five months; Nancy Ip was announced on 20 May 2022, effective 19 October^※, also a window of about five months. The length of this window is exactly the segment in the earlier "notice period" table from "successor announcement" to "effective date"—the two concepts are two names for the same stretch of time: from the University's perspective, it is the "notice period"; from the individual successor's perspective, it is the "designate period."

The existence of this designate period means HKUST's presidential transitions almost never feature the jarring rhythm of "announced today, in office tomorrow." It works in concert with the "seamless effective date" to form a front-to-back mechanism: first, a multi-month designate period allows the outgoing and incoming leaders to prepare calmly; then, the departure and assumption dates are aligned on the same day, ensuring no vacancy and no rushed preparation. This is also why HKUST's public records show virtually no "Acting President" arrangement—routine transitions are fully absorbed by the designate period and the seamless handover, removing the need to find a temporary substitute. The situation that truly required an "acting" mechanism was, instead, the extraordinary event on the governance line—the death of a Council Chairman in office in 2014.

# Beyond the Handover: "Baton Renewal" and the Overlooked Node of Reappointment

A succession dossier can easily fixate on the moments when the office changes hands and miss another equally critical type of node—the "renewal" of a sitting President upon the expiry of a term. HKUST Presidents typically serve for a term of several years and are eligible for reappointment; a reappointment is effectively another way of gripping the baton for an extra lap, a different form of governance continuity. The clearest publicly documented instance is the reappointment of Tony F. Chan.

According to an official release, the Council announced on 11 September 2013 that Tony F. Chan would continue as President for another term, his tenure extending to 2019^※. Having taken office in September 2009, he was renewed after about four years of his first term, putting him on track to serve until 2019—meaning the conditions were originally in place for him to hold the presidency for an entire decade. In the renewal announcement, he expressed his sentiments with the line, "I am honored to continue to serve this 'miracle' University that has risen so far so fast."^※ Intriguingly, this mandate "until 2019" was ultimately not fulfilled: Tony Chan stepped down from HKUST in August 2018, moving, according to English Wikipedia^※, to the presidency of KAUST. That is to say, he departed early despite having received a renewed mandate and with about a year remaining on his term—forming a subtle echo with Wei Shyy's "handing over about a year early" four years later: of HKUST's two recent presidents, one an external hire and one internally promoted, neither used up their full authorised term before leaving.

If we regard "first appointment → renewal → departure" as three types of nodes, the HKUST presidential relay is not just five changes of person; it is a sequence of alternating "assumption, renewal, and handover" moments. The renewal node serves as a reminder that how long a President serves depends both on the term assigned at appointment and on whether they themselves choose to see it through to the end—the two do not always coincide.

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# "Assuming Office" Is Not the "Installation Ceremony": Two Easily Confused Dates

The succession dossier also contains a date trap worth clarifying: the day a President "assumes office" (legally and administratively takes up the post) is very often not the day they are formally "installed" during a congregation ceremony. The former is the legal and administrative baton-pass; the latter is the ceremonial coronation; the two are typically separated by a month or two.

Consider the two most recent cases. Wei Shyy assumed office effective 1 September 2018^※, but his formal installation ceremony took place at the 26th Congregation in November of that year. Nancy Ip assumed office effective 19 October 2022^※, while her installation ceremony occurred at the 30th Congregation in November of the same year—the moment when she was formally installed as the University's first female President. In other words, a new President holds full authority from the moment they assume office; the installation at the congregation is largely a symbolic public confirmation. For anyone reading this succession dossier, fixing on the "effective date" as the standard measure is essential to avoid mistaking the ceremonial date for the moment when power actually changed hands. All the tables above in this piece uniformly use the effective date, not the ceremony date.

# Who Appoints Whom? The Two Lines’ Distinct Sources of Authority

A final structural distinction separates the presidential line from the Council Chairman line most clearly: the "appointing authority" for the two lines does not originate from the same place.

The President is appointed by the Council—the wording across the five verifiable appointment announcements consistently states that "the Council has approved/unanimously approved the appointment," as seen, for instance, in the cases of Tony F. Chan in 2009^※ and Nancy Ip in 2022^※, where the Council made the final decision. The Council Chairman is appointed by the University's Chancellor, i.e., the Chief Executive of Hong Kong. According to a Hong Kong Government press release, Andrew Liao was appointed Council Chairman by the Chief Executive in 2015^※, and a batch of appointments for Pro-Chancellor, Court, and Council positions were officially announced in 2023^※.

This layered design—"Council appoints President, Chancellor appoints Council Chairman"—creates a top-down chain of appointment: the Chancellor (Chief Executive) appoints the Council Chairman and some Council members → the Council selects and appoints the President → the President leads the executive line. The two relay lines thus each have their own source of authority—the President is accountable to the Council, while the Council Chairman enters office via a public-power appointment.

This chain of appointment also explains why the two lines have different handover rhythms. Presidential transitions are led by the Council, which can arrange the global search, designate period, and effective date at its own pace, crafting a deliberate schedule. The Council Chairmanship is appointed by the Chancellor; the appointment and reappointment must follow a public-power process, meaning the timing and rhythm are more susceptible to external scheduling. The procedural detail discussed earlier is a direct consequence of this separation: after the death in office of the Council Chairman in 2014, the vacancy could not be filled by the University's executive line, nor could the Council substantively appoint a replacement on its own; it had to first be bridged by the Deputy Chairman as acting, and then wait for the Chief Executive to formally appoint a new Chairman—precisely because the power to appoint rests with the Chancellor, an extra formal appointment step was required to fill the post. The separation of appointing authority is a key to understanding the distinct rhythms of the two relay lines in HKUST's succession lineage (for the full division of responsibilities in the three-tier governance architecture, see Governance Structure and Successive Leaders (Part I)^※).

# The Parallel Line of Council Chairmen: A Death in Office and the Acting Arrangement

Running parallel to the administrative relay of Presidents is the six-term succession of Council Chairmen at the governance level. The biographical details and achievements in office are fully chronicled in Governance Structure and Successive Leaders (Part II)^※ and will not be repeated here. This section merely condenses the six chairmen into a chain of "relay nodes," marking each start and end point, along with one shared procedural characteristic—all were appointed by the University's Chancellor (the Chief Executive), not elected by the Council itself.

Among these nodes, the one that best illustrates how institutional continuity is preserved is the 2014 event—the death of a Council Chairman in office and how the vacancy was filled.

The fourth Council Chairman, Marvin Cheung, was expected to serve until 2015 but passed away in office in September 2014, the only one of the six chairmen to die during his term. This was an unexpected vacancy with no notice period, impossible to manage in a leisurely way—a stark contrast to the presidential handovers with their "announce, designate, then seamlessly transfer" approach. Under HKUST's ordinances, the Council Chairman must be a non-executive person who is not an employee of the University, cannot be temporarily covered by someone from the University's executive line, and cannot have a successor pre-arranged as in a presidential designate period. This sudden vacancy could only be filled by the existing Deputy Council Chairman. At the time, Deputy Chairman Henry Tang Ying-yen acted in the role, maintaining the Council's operations until a new Chairman formally took office. According to a Hong Kong Government release, Andrew Liao was appointed Council Chairman by the Chief Executive on 6 March 2015^※, ending the acting arrangement after a period of about half a year.

This two-step process—"Deputy Chairman acts, then the Chief Executive formally appoints a new Chairman"—demonstrates the continuity mechanism for an extraordinary vacancy within the governance layer: first, stabilise the post with an existing deputy to avoid a governance vacuum, then fill it substantively through formal procedures via an appointment by the Chancellor. It stands in contrast to the orderly pace of routine handovers but points towards the same goal—whatever the notice period, the top governance post must never be without a presiding officer at any moment. This is also the only node in the entire succession dossier where the word "acting" was genuinely invoked.

This parallel line also features a recurring pattern—"outgoing Council Chairman transitions into the Court system." According to the HKUST obituary^※, founding Chairman Chung Sze-yuen, after stepping down, became Chairman of the Court and Pro-Chancellor. According to the 2023 Hong Kong Government announcement^※, third Chairman John Chan was that year appointed Pro-Chancellor. This "step down but not retire" transition path, keeping the experience of outgoing Chairmen within the governance structure in a different capacity, is one source of the continuity of experience in HKUST's governance layer (for details on overlaps and patterns, see Governance Structure and Successive Leaders (Part II)^※).

The relay node for the current Council Chairman, Professor Harry Shum, is the "freshest": according to a HKUST release, he was first appointed in March 2023, and his reappointment was announced in January 2026, with the new term starting 6 March 2026 for another three years, potentially extending his total service to 2029^※. The reappointment coincided with HKUST's 35th anniversary, and in his statement, he expressed his honour at being reappointed.

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# There Is Also an Invisible Third Line: The Chancellor and the Pro-Chancellor

The President and the Council Chairman are the two most visible lines in this succession lineage, but at the apex of HKUST's governance architecture lies a third line that is far less discussed—the Chancellor and the Pro-Chancellor. The method of succession on this line differs from both of the others: the Chancellor is not selected or appointed but changes automatically with the officeholder. Under HKUST's governance statutes, the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region automatically becomes the Chancellor of the University by virtue of the Ordinance, serving as the titular head of the University. In other words, the baton of Chancellor changes hands with each successive Chief Executive, entirely outside any University selection procedure—a logic entirely different from the succession of the President and Council Chairman (for the Chancellor's role in the governance structure, see Governance Structure and Successive Leaders (Part I)^※).

The position on this line that truly involves a "relay" is the Pro-Chancellor—a role filled by specific individuals, and one between which personnel circulate with the other two lines. According to the University's obituary, founding Council Chairman Chung Sze-yuen, after stepping down, transitioned to become Chairman of the Court and Pro-Chancellor, serving until around 2011^※. According to the 2023 government announcement, third Council Chairman John Chan was appointed Pro-Chancellor that year^※. Bringing this line into the picture, HKUST's governance lineage is actually a three-strand parallel: the Chancellor (automatic change with the Chief Executive), the Council Chairman (appointed by the Chancellor), and the President (appointed by the Council). Figures like Chung Sze-yuen and John Chan, after retiring from the Council Chairmanship, followed the path of "Chairman → Court/Pro-Chancellor," carrying their experience onto this third line to continue serving. This invisible third line is another entry point for understanding the "step down but not retire, experience never dispersed" characteristic of HKUST's governance layer.

# Why Do the Three Lines Rarely Change at Once? A Glance at the State of Play in 2026

When the two relay lines of President and Council Chairman are overlaid, an intriguing pattern emerges: the two lines very rarely undergo a transition at the exact same moment. Most handovers are staggered, ensuring that the governance layer always retains at least one "thread of continuity." The full crossover table and point-by-point comparison of this pattern has already been presented in Governance Structure and Successive Leaders (Part II)^※ and will not be repeated here; from the perspective of this "succession dossier," the mechanisms scattered across the various sections can be consolidated into three reproducible observations:

• The watershed is 2018: The presidential recruitment pathway shifted wholesale from "external hire from overseas" (Woo Chia-wei, Paul Chu, Tony F. Chan) to "internal promotion" (Wei Shyy, Nancy Ip), marking the transition from borrowing external prestige to establish the University to relying on an internal pipeline to sustain it.
• Notice is given in months: All four verifiable notice periods ranged from several months to nearly a year, with the shortest at about five months (2009) and the longest at about eleven months (the 2021 resignation notice). No transition was a last-minute substitution; successors typically had a multi-month "designate period," and the departure date and assumption date were, wherever possible, seamlessly aligned.
• Step down but not retire: Outgoing Council Chairmen often transitioned into the third line via the "Chairman → Chairman of the Court / Pro-Chancellor" path. Extraordinary vacancies, such as a death in office, were bridged through a two-step "Deputy Chairman acts → formal appointment" process—both serving to maintain the governance layer's continuity of experience.

Staggered transitions, generous notice periods, seamless effective dates, deputy acting as a bridge—these practices, scattered across different junctures, are in fact different facets of a single governance logic: all are designed to minimise shock and preserve continuity during changes at the very top.

As of July 2026, the current state of this succession lineage is as follows: the executive line is led by the fifth President, Nancy Ip; the governance line is chaired by the reappointed sixth Council Chairman, Harry Shum. The two respectively represent the profiles of "a home-grown scientist steering the University" and "a scientist with an industry background providing governance." During Nancy Ip's term, the most significant new task on the presidential plate is the preparation for establishing a medical school—according to a HKUST release, the University has received government approval to establish a new medical school and has commenced preparatory work^※, with the relevant steering committee chaired by the President herself, coordinating curriculum design, faculty recruitment, clinical partnerships, and resource planning. This means the current baton-holder is not just leading a mature research university but guiding it through the next leg of a journey from a "Unified HKUST, Complementary Campuses" structure towards a comprehensive research university with its own medical school. On Harry Shum's side, his reappointment extends the continuity of the governance line to 2029, precisely covering the critical years of the medical school's establishment. As for when the next presidential handover will occur, whether it will follow an external hire or internal promotion path, how long the notice period will be, and whether the Council Chairman will still be the same person by then—those will be the next lines to be written in this succession dossier's future. Counting from the moment Chung Sze-yuen grasped the first baton in 1986, this lineage has, by 2026, been running for a full forty years. It records not merely the replacement of a few names, but how a young university, through staggered transitions, ample notice, and orderly bridging arrangements, has time and again managed the most disorder-prone of acts—changing its leaders—with composure and without ever leaving a vacuum.

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