One of my main roles as the new Head of Mathematics will be to work together with my colleagues to build up a strong teaching and research department. We will continue our strong commitments in teaching, in taking care of students, and in high quality research.

We are experiencing major personnel changes. Prof. Kaitai Fang and Prof. Fred Hickernell will be leaving the Department. On behalf of the Department, I thank them for their outstanding service and contributions. On the other hand, I am pleased to announce that two new professors, Prof. Lixing Zhu and Prof. Michael Ng, will be joining the Department in September 2005. I warmly welcome them and look forward to the new initiatives and energy that they will undoubtedly bring to the Department and to the Faculty.

The focus of departmental research interests are computational mathematics, statistics and discrete mathematics. Our research will continue to expand in upcoming years. The advent of inexpensive high-performance computing has greatly expanded the impact of mathematics. One of our research centers, HKBU's High Performance Cluster Computing Centre , headed by Prof. Lizhi Liao, will facilitate the contributions of mathematicians in the development and application of high-performance computing.

Our PKU-HKBU Joint Research Institute for Applied Mathematics and Statistics Research and Consultancy Centre will continue to contribute to our research excellence in mathematical sciences.

On programme development, our Department is collaborating with the Business School of the University of Kent and may soon launch a new, joint MSc in Statistics/MSc in Operations Research. This programme is to replace our current MSc programme in Scientific Computing. It is currently a top priority in our Department's development.

Many challenges lie ahead, but with your support, I am confident that together we will make HKBU's Mathematics Department a first rate contemporary department.