Background
The Medical Faculty of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) is the oldest faculty in tertiary education in Hong Kong . Its origins go back to 1887, when the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese (the predecessor of the University of Hong Kong , renamed the Hong Kong College of Medicine in 1907) was founded by the London Missionary Society. Besides training doctors and nurses, the Faculty has always been at the forefront of medical research and development of new clinical services for the benefit of mankind.

Departments and Staff
The Medical Faculty is the largest faculty in the University with around 200 full-time teaching staff members, and is also one of the most technologically advanced medical institutions in the region. It has 17 teaching departments, zoned into three generic groups with a mix of clinical and basic science departments to enhance synergism.

Academic staff members in the Faculty undertake a wide spectrum of research, ranging from studies in frontier basic medical science to cutting-edge clinical research. With a view to promoting multidisciplinary research, five research centres have been established to bring together researchers in diverse fields under common interest topics and provide for collaborative academic pursuits:

- Cancer
- Heart, Brain, Hormone and Healthy Aging
- Infection and Immunology
- Public Health
- Reproduction, Development and Growth

Research Activities
With a strong research base, the Faculty has made important contributions to the study and treatment of various diseases. The first case of bone marrow transplantation and the first case of successful liver transplantation in Hong Kong were performed at Queen Mary Hospital . The novel technique of adult living related right lobe liver transplantation was pioneered here and has since gained worldwide popularity. More recently, researchers in the Faculty have played a pivotal role in combating the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003, and controlling the H5N1 influenza outbreak.

The Faculty places strong emphasis on multidisciplinary research, and has played a significant role in the establishment of the University's Genome Research Centre. There is an increasing number of collaborative projects with renowned institutions both in the Mainland and overseas. The HKU-Pasteur Research Centre is a joint venture with the prestigious Institut Pasteur of France . Professor Robert Webster, Professor of Infectious Diseases at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and a world-class scholar in influenza, is closely collaborating with the Influenza Centre at HKU.

The Faculty receives financial support for research activities from various sources in different forms, including research grants, conference grants, and fellowships offered by the University and other funding agencies, and donations made by professional and industrial bodies and individual benefactors. In particular, the Faculty has continued to achieve outstanding results in the annual Competitive Earmarked Research Grants exercise of the Research Grants Council, securing HK$64.07 million in 2006/07.

Research Postgraduate Programmes
The Faculty shares with other Faculties in the University the common goals of imparting knowledge to students through research. Every department in this Faculty therefore actively participates in the training of research postgraduate students for the MPhil and PhD degrees. While pre-clinical departments conduct and supervise research mainly in laboratories, clinical departments conduct and supervise research in both laboratories or in clinical settings. Research postgraduate students of the Faculty enjoy the benefits of working in state-of-the-art laboratories.

The Faculty has been attracting high calibre candidates to enroll in its research postgraduate programmes. The programmes are not only popular among medical graduates, but also graduates in biological, biomedical, and health sciences. Graduates in physical sciences, engineering, computer sciences engineering, and social sciences are also welcome to apply.