Welcome to the Website of Prof. Donald C. Chang (張東才教授
)
Prof. Donald Chang is currently
Professor Emeritus
and
Adjunct Professor
in the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He obtained
a
Bachelor degree (Physics) from the National Taiwan University (1965) and Master
and Doctoral degrees (Physics) from Rice University (1970) in the USA. He
was
a joint faculty member in the Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, Texas, USA)
and Rice University (Dept of Physics) during the 70s and 80s.
In 1991, he joined the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology as a
founding faculty member. He was appointed
Professor and later Chair Professor.
Prof. Chang has very broad research interests, including bio-medical physics, quantum physics and signaling mechanisms in living systems. He had conducted collaborative research in many institutions, including the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole (now part of University of Chicago), Peking University, Tsinghua University, NIH and University of California at San Diego (with Prof. Roger Tsien). He has published five books and over 130 papers in international journals, including Nature, Science, PNAS and Biophys J. He enjoys working on innovative projects and owns more than two dozen international patents.
Prof. Chang was a pioneer in the early development of spin-echo NMR for cancer detection. He was the first one to report that the NMR relaxation times (T1 and T2) and diffusion coefficient undergo a progressive change when the biological tissue transforms from the normal morphological state to pre-neoplastic and then tumor state (PNAS 1972 and Nature 1972). This discovery was the scientific basis for the development of MRI. (Link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44418-025-00001-9)
Prof. Chang
was the founding President
of the Hong Kong Biophysical Society and a Fellow in the Hong Kong Institute of
Science. In 2022-2024, he was appointed Ambassador for China by the
Biophysical Society (USA).
Research Interests:
Last updated on 2025