Participating in the Laidlaw Scholarship has reshaped how I think about research, responsibility, and what it means to lead with purpose. As a Speech-Language Pathology student at the University of Hong Kong, I came into this scholarship with a clinical mindset, like to focus on what works, what the evidence says, and how to help patients recover. What I did not expect was how deeply the experience would challenge me to think beyond the clinical, and to ask harder questions about who research serves, whose voices are centred, and what I can do to make the world a better place for everyone to live.
My research project investigated the efficacy of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) combined with speech therapy for Cantonese-speaking individuals with post-stroke aphasia. Aphasia is a condition that profoundly disrupts a person's ability to communicate, and it affects roughly one in three stroke survivors worldwide. Yet the vast majority of existing research on brain stimulation and language recovery has been conducted on English-speaking populations, using standardised, one-size-fits-all protocols that do not account for individual differences in brain connectivity or the unique linguistic demands of tonal languages like Cantonese. From the very beginning, this felt like more than a research question. It felt like a question of equity.
Running a randomised controlled trial with ten Cantonese-speaking participants gave me an intimate understanding of how research intersects with real human lives. Each participant was a person navigating the daily frustrations of communication loss, often years after their stroke. Sitting with them during sessions, observing their effort and their progress, I was reminded constantly that behind every data point is a person whose quality of life depends on whether we get this right. This grounded my work in a way that no textbook could. I became more careful, more deliberate, and more aware of the ethical weight that comes with conducting research on vulnerable populations.
One of the most significant intellectual shifts I experienced during this project was moving away from generalised assumptions toward individualised thinking. The study compared a generalised tACS protocol against an individualised one, where electrode placement was tailored to each participant's specific dysfunctome profile. The results suggested that the individualised approach showed stronger evidence of improvement, particularly in aphasia quotient scores. This finding resonated with me far beyond the neuroscience. It reinforced a principle I now carry into how I think about leadership and global citizenship: that meaningful support requires understanding the specific context and needs of the person or the group in front of you, not simply applying a universal solution and hoping it fits.
Presenting this work at the Laidlaw Conference at Durham University in October last year (2025) was a formative experience in its own right. Standing in a room full of scholars from vastly different disciplines and backgrounds, I was struck by how much our projects, though entirely different in topic, shared a common thread. Whether someone was researching environmental policy, mental health access, or educational inequality, we were all grappling with the same underlying question: how do we use our skills and our privilege as researchers to create something that genuinely benefits others? The conversations I had at Durham pushed me to articulate my own values more clearly. I had to explain not just what I found, but why it mattered, and to whom.
Those conversations also deepened my understanding of global citizenship. Aphasia does not discriminate by language, culture, or geography, but access to effective rehabilitation does. The linguistic and cultural gap in aphasia research means that Cantonese-speaking patients in Hong Kong, and by extension many communities across the Greater Bay Area, have historically had fewer evidence-based options available to them. My research is a small step toward addressing that gap, but it made me aware of how much work remains. Ethical leadership in research, I came to understand, is not only about rigorous methodology. It is about asking who is being left out of the conversation, and actively working to include them.
The Oxford Character Programme that ran alongside the scholarship deepened this reflection further. Thinking through concepts like integrity, humanity, and courage in the context of leadership helped me name things I had felt but not yet articulated. There were moments in the research process where I had to make difficult judgment calls, about how to interpret inconclusive findings honestly, about how to communicate limitations without undermining the significance of the work, and about how to advocate for a patient population that is often overlooked in research funding. These were not purely technical decisions. They were character decisions.
What the Laidlaw Scholarship has taught me, above all, is self-discovery and the importance and awareness of being a global citizen. As I continue my journey, my upcoming LiA project and my career in SLP, I hope to carry forward the values this scholarship has helped me develop. I want to keep asking whose needs are not yet being met, to pursue work that is rigorous and compassionate in equal measure, and to lead in a way that is always oriented toward the people the work is ultimately for.