Rocky Tuan

Rocky Tuan Sung-chi is a Hong Kong medical researcher and bioengineer who served as the vice-chancellor and president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) from 2018 to 2025. Prior to his vice-chancellorship, Tuan served as distinguished visiting professor and director of the Institute for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine.

Tuan had been on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) where he held a number of roles, including Arthur J. Rooney Sr. Professor of Sports Medicine, the executive vice chair of the department of orthopaedic surgery, and professorship in the department of bioengineering. He was the director of the Center for Military Medicine Research and an associate director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Tuan continues to serve as the director of Center for Cellular and Molecular Engineering at Pitt, despite his current academic position in Hong Kong. For the 2018 fiscal year, he was one of the top 25 highest-paid employees at Pitt.

Tuan's research efforts focus on bioengineering applied to the musculoskeletal system.

Education Born in Hong Kong to Republic of China Army veterans, Tuan completed primary and secondary education at St. Joseph's Anglo-Chinese School, and then attended briefly the Queen's College without sitting the matriculation examination. He received his B.A. degree in chemistry from Berea College in Kentucky in 1972. He received his Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from Rockefeller University in New York City in 1977, supervised by Zanvil Cohn. He continued his postdoctoral research at Rockefeller and then began a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School, first with Melvin J. Glimcher and later with Jerome Gross. Eight years later, he and his wife, fellow NIH scientist Cecilia Lo, were recruited to the University of Pittsburgh, where Tuan joined the departments of orthopaedic surgery and bioengineering and became the founding director of the newly established Center for Cellular and Molecular Engineering. and the editor of Birth Defects Research Part C: Embryo Today. He and Lo co-edited a three-volume book titled Developmental Biology Protocols.

Presidency at CUHK

In 2017, Tuan was appointed as the eighth vice-chancellor and president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He took up the post in January 2018. On 18 October 2019, Tuan released an open letter in which he detailed some of the alleged police abuses that he had heard from his students, calling these "serious allegations from a human rights point of view" and urging the police to protect the rights of those arrested. He said he would write to Chief Executive Carrie Lam requesting an independent investigation of his students' cases outside existing mechanisms. This earned Tuan the condemnation of several police groups, who wrote that CUHK had "reduced itself to a hub of anti-China, Hong Kong independence forces". Later in December, Times Higher Education subsequently named Tuan as one of the world's most influential academics, citing that he has reached out to students, called for an end to violence, and "stood up for his campus and students [...] despite being criticised by establishment figures".

In November 2023, the Legislative Council of Hong Kong amended the Chinese University of Hong Kong Ordinance, reducing the university's governing council from 55 to 34 members and substantially decreasing internal representation. The reforms were opposed by members of the university community, who argued that they could weaken university autonomy.

The restructured council subsequently dismissed vice-president and university secretary Eric Ng Shu-pui, who had signed a petition opposing the reforms. In January 2024, Tuan announced that he would resign with effect from January 2025. He said that the implementation of the new governance structure made it an appropriate time for CUHK to select a new vice-chancellor and president.

Tuan was succeeded as vice-chancellor and president on 8 January 2025, following an earlier resignation. He was succeeded by Dennis Lo.

Research Tuan's research group focuses on bioengineering and tissue regeneration as applied to the musculoskeletal system, with an interest in translational research. Tuan's group has expertise in the study of adult stem cells and in the development of the musculoskeletal system. and work funded in 2016 to study model systems on the International Space Station.

Other Tuan was the former mentor of University of Rochester undergraduate Annie Le, who later was a doctoral student at Yale University until her murder in 2009.

Awards and honors Elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, 2000 Marshall R. Urist Award, Orthopaedic Research Society, 2004 Carnegie Science Center Life Sciences Award, 2016 Clemson Award for Contributions to the Literature, Society for Biomaterials, 2016