The Laidlaw Scholars Program has been a genuinely transformative experience for me, offering opportunities that completely reshaped my perspective as both a student and a researcher. My journey began during my first summer placement at the University of Leeds, which was my very first time traveling and living overseas. Beyond learning the fundamentals of wet-lab research alongside an international team, I had to figure out the everyday basics of living on my own—from finding housing to cooking my own meals. That summer gave me both the technical foundation I needed for my future lab work and the personal confidence to navigate independent living and academic exchanges later on.
Building on my earlier winter internship with the Hong Kong Red Cross—where we distributed vouchers to help refugees and asylum seekers cope with severe winter cold—I turned my focus during the Leadership in Action (LiA) project toward the opposite extreme: Hong Kong's suffocating summer heat. Partnering with both the Hong Kong Red Cross and Professor Ren Chao’s research group at The University of Hong Kong, our goal was to support low-income families living in subdivided units across the city while gathering meaningful research data on how extreme heat affects human health.
Our work unfolded in two main phases. We started by reaching out to residents through local Community Living Rooms. These neighborhood hubs act as vital lifelines and extended living spaces for families trapped in tiny, poorly ventilated apartments, giving children a place to learn and families a chance to connect. During registration, we provided participants with health-monitoring smartwatches to track their vital signs throughout the hottest stretches of the season. Next, we conducted regular follow-up phone calls to ask about their sleep quality and daily comfort before distributing targeted relief: four separate HKD 150 payments to help cover air conditioning electricity costs during "hot nights"—defined by the Hong Kong Observatory as consecutive nights over 28 degrees Celsius.
Seeing the immediate impact of this project on people's daily lives was deeply moving. While long-term carbon reduction is crucial for the planet, families in cramped subdivided units face urgent health risks right now. High electricity bills force many residents to endure unsafe indoor temperatures simply because they cannot afford to run the air conditioner. Even Dr. Lam Chiu-ying, former director of the Hong Kong Observatory, observed our work and agreed that night-time cooling is a basic necessity for health under these conditions. By bridging direct financial aid with active health tracking, this project showed me how compassionate community support and rigorous scientific research can come together to make a real difference.