CityU to confer honorary doctorates on three distinguished individuals

The City University of Macau (CityU) will confer honorary doctorates upon three distinguished individuals, Thomas C. Südhof, Xiaohong Guan, and Mark P. Becker, in recognition of their outstanding achievements in their respective fields and their significant contributions to society and the advancement of higher education. The 45th Anniversary Ceremony and Conferment Ceremony of Honorary Degrees will be held on Saturday, March 28^th 2026, at the Cultural Centre on the Taipa campus, where the three honorary doctorate recipients will be present to receive the honor.

Prof. Thomas C. Südhof

Prof. Thomas C. Südhof is a world-renowned biochemist, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology at the Stanford University. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and of Medicine (NAM) of the U.S. and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His pioneering work in the mechanism of synaptic neurotransmission has opened new horizons for research into neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and autism. In 2013, he was awarded the Lasker~DeBakey Medical Basic Research Award, one of the most prestigious biomedical research prizes. The same year, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discoveries of the machinery regulating vesicle traffic in cells. In 2017, he co-founded the Thomas Beijing Research Institute, dedicated to advancing research into central nervous system injury repair.

Prof. Xiaohong Guan

Professor Xiaohong Guan is a distinguished scientist in the field of systems engineering. He was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2017 and became a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2018. He serves as the Dean of the Faculty of Electronic and Information Engineering at Xi’an Jiaotong University, and is the Chief Scientist of the Key Laboratory of Intelligent Networks and Network Security of the Ministry of Education. He also holds positions such as a chair professor in the Department of Automation at Tsinghua University, chief scientist of the Huanghuai Laboratory in Henan Province, honorary director of the Development Strategy Advisory Committee at Wuhan Business University, and chief scientist and director of the Academic Committee of the Laboratory for Operation Optimization of Digital and Intelligent New Power Systems. His research focuses on cutting-edge fields including the economics and security of complex networked systems, optimization of power, energy and manufacturing systems, network and information security, and cyber-physical systems. He explores the intersection of music and computational intelligence. As a principal contributor, he has received two second-class National Natural Science Awards, the Ho Leung Ho Lee Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress, and several international academic accolades.

Prof. Mark P. Becker

Mark P. Becker is a distinguished American higher education leader and biostatistician. He currently serves as the Board Chair of the Commission for Public Higher Education in the United States of America, is President Emeritus of Georgia State University (GSU), and was President of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. Professor Becker is known for driving large-scale institutional transformation, advancing equity and inclusion in education, and championing evidence-based innovation. He previously held faculty positions at prominent institutions including the University of Michigan and the University of Washington and is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. During his tenure as the GSU President, he implemented a series of innovative initiatives, establishing the institution as a national model for student success and equity. Prof. Becker received numerous accolades including the Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence in Higher Education and the Academic Leadership Award from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. His transformative work at Georgia State is profiled in Andrew Gumbel’s book Won’t Lose This Dream: How an Upstart Urban University Rewrote the Rules of a Broken System.

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