Professor Kang Nee Ting receives 2025 Chris Hawes Award for Outreach and Education
The RMS is delighted to announce Professor Kang Nee Ting as the 2025 recipient of the Chris Hawes Award for Outreach and Education.
Kang Nee is the Head of School at UNM for the School of Pharmacy and Division of Biomedical Sciences. In 2017 she applied for some funding from the University of Nottingham to undertake outreach work from the University of Nottingham campus in Malaysia (UNM). The RMS donated a microscope activity kit in support of this ambition. Initially she hosted successful school visits to UNM and following this, expanded the reach to local schools and education centres (for refugee students) in Greater Kuala Lumpur and Selangor.
Spurred on by this success, Kang Nee continued to reach out using microscopy as a means of providing education and opportunities to underserved communities in Malaysia far from the University campus, local to the indigenous people and to refugees. During one project, participants had the opportunity to have eye tests and glasses provided before undertaking the science activities, thus helping their educational prospects. Examples of her work include science workshops in rural towns in Sarawak and Sabah (located in Borneo) and receiving attention and funding from the Malaysian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) and, Ministry of Education, Innovation and Talent Development, Sarawak. The work centres around reducing inequality in STEM education in Malaysia, and education on protecting the planet on land and in the oceans via microplastic work with microscopes.
In the last two years alone, she and her small team have brought science education via microscopy to more than 18 venues across Malaysia and reached almost 2,000 children who would not usually have access to this kind of quality and compassionate education. Kang Nee's dynamism and compassion in bringing science education through microscopy embodies the spirit of the RMS and the scope and magnitude of her success and impact with the kit is remarkable.