Meet the Students from the University of Hong Kong

Jan. 26, 2010— -- This year 12 students from the University of Hong Kong will contribute to the ABC News on Campus program as 'Roving Reporters.'

The 'Roving Reporter' program gives aspiring journalists who are not formally part of the ABC News on Campus program the opportunity to contribute material to ABC. To learn more about 'Roving Reporter' please click HERE.

Thanks to a grant secured by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre, at the University of Hong Kong , each student will have the opportunity to develop projects for ABC News. Some will be paid to travel to other Asia destinations on reporting visits. The partnership marks the first collaboration between ABC News on Campus and a journalism school outside the United States. Under the tutelage of Jim Laurie, an ABC News veteran who now teaches at HKU, the students will pitch stories directly to ABC News in New York, with the goal of completing six packages throughout the course of the semester for use on one or more of ABC News' platforms.

The students, identified as the best and brightest from the HKU, hail from a variety of backgrounds and several different countries.

Read their bios below to learn more.

Liyi Chen is a senior at the University of Hong Kong where she majors in journalism and economics. Originally from Singapore, she has long been fascinated with the socio-political changes taking place in Hong Kong with its return to China in 1997. Coupled with an aspiration to be a journalist since a young age, she figured she could pursue both interests simultaneously by doing a journalism degree in Hong Kong. As such, in 2007, she moved to Hong Kong for college. Later on in early 2009, she spent a semester on exchange at Fudan University in Shanghai.

While Chen has always had a greater passion for social and cultural studies, an internship as a business reporter in summer 2008 made her appreciate the role of commerce in our daily lives. Her curiosity in the behind-the-scenes aspect of the news business was also piqued, and she eventually planned the entire media launch across print, radio and television for a new consumer advocacy group in Singapore in summer 2009. Chen aspires to be a business journalist one day.

Zela Chin started her journalism career at CNN headquarters in Atlanta. After several professional moves, her last position in the United States was producing for daily news shows at CNN International.

She wanted a career abroad so she moved to CNN Hong Kong in 2005 to produce for interview program TalkAsia. She secured interviews with guests such as Disney CEO Bob Iger, scientist Stephen Hawking, and opera singer Luciano Pavarotti.

Currently, she is a master's of journalism student at the University of Hong Kong and contributes articles and photographs to the Phnom Penh Post.

She received her undergraduate degree at Duke University, with a major in Slavic Languages and International Comparative Area Studies. She also studied in both St. Petersburg and Beijing.

In her free time, Chin is actively involved with the Duke University community, and mentors undergraduates on their careers and working in Asia.

She also enjoys pilates, hiking, traveling, and perfecting her Mandarin.

Chin was born and raised in Los Angeles. She speaks conversational Mandarin and fluent Cantonese.

Tem Hansen is a master's of journalism exchange student at the University of Hong Kong. He is originally from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, where he is pursuing a two-year master's in media studies. Since arriving in Hong Kong a few months ago, he has fallen in love with the journalism program at HKU as well as the busy vibe of the city.

As a film and media major, he has worked with audio-visual media both theoretically and practically for the past four years, producing documentaries and short fictional films as well as analytical reports on narrative structures and framing. All these have given him a solid background for producing television news, which has been a growing interest of his during his stay in Hong Kong.

Besides his interest in the news-media industry, Hansen indulges himself with various cultural activities and sports. As a former professional football player in Scandinavia, he still follows the European leagues on television and play a few times every week.

Marcus Ko was born and raised in Hong Kong. Now a senior at the University of Hong Kong, he is majoring in journalism and global studies.

Ko did his first internship at a local Chinese newspaper in 2008. Right after the internship, he spent his second year of college at the Danish School of Journalism, Denmark, where he studied journalism and multimedia, and TV journalism. He has experience covering stories in Belgium and Northern Ireland, as well as producing news stories in Latvia and Denmark.

He is now back in Hong Kong and will start working for a magazine in December. He would like to work in different fields of journalism after graduation and dreams of working as a foreign correspondent someday. In his spare time, he likes traveling, reading and going to the movies. He also enjoys acting very much which is why you may see him on stage once in a while.

Andrew Lau is a master's of journalism student at the University of Hong Kong. Before graduate school, he completed his undergraduate studies at Northwestern University, where he majored in radio, television and film. During his time at Northwestern, he anchored and reported for the campus radio station WNUR. He also directed, produced and edited a documentary about American collegiate cycling.

Born in Los Angeles but raised in Hong Kong, Lau is fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin and English. He also began studying Japanese three years ago and last year studied in Hokkaido, Japan. He hopes his language skills will be useful in his work for ABC News On Campus and in his internship at International Channel Shanghai this coming winter.

In his free time, Lau enjoys taking pictures, spending time with his family and his dog, and going to karaoke with friends.

Li Li is a master's of journalism student at the University of Hong Kong.

Born in Chongqing, southwest China, Li Li went to university in Beijing, where she later worked as a news researcher/assistant for Swedish Daily Expressen during the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008 and the Daily Telegraph in 2009. She has also traveled extensively across China and has helped produce stories over a range of topics, including human rights issues, environmental problems, and cultural events.

With a keen interest in television news production, Li Li is now doing a winter internship with ABC News Beijing bureau.

Oscar Lin is a senior at the University of Hong Kong, majoring in journalism and finance. An energetic and adventurous guy who is always exploring the world, Lin loves chatting with people because it is the most useful way for him to know about different people and the world. In early 2009, Lin went on an exchange program in the United States, where he unexpectedly fell in love with the California sunshine. He used to dislike the beach but ended up spending his entire spring break on the beaches of Santa Monica.

Lin has a wide variety of interests, and his most recent muse is a play entitled "Man and Woman: War and Peace" by Hong Kong director Andrew Lam -- he has watched it three times already, but is keen to watch it again.

Yoshihiro Miyake is currently a third year student at the University of Hong Kong, double-majoring in journalism and politics.

An avid reader, Miyake was first interested in becoming a journalist at a young age. While he initially wanted to be a writer for a music magazine, his recent experience working as a research assistant to a professor who was doing a multimedia project on Hong Kong and Shanghai's history inspired him to pursue a career in television news production instead.

Outside of journalism, Miyake's interests include reading, video games and poker. He also enjoys playing and listening to music.

Carmen Ng is an aspiring multimedia journalist and traveling filmmaker majoring in journalism and international relations at the University of Hong Kong.

After a summer covering crime news at the Hong Kong-based Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily, she spent a semester learning American journalism at the University of Maryland in College Park. She spent the following summer interning in Beijing as a copy editor at CCTV International Channel and as a production assistant for the program "Talk Asia" at CNN's Hong Kong Bureau.

Ng went on to help manage International Herald Tribune's Web content and assisted its coverage of major regional stories such as the Lehman Brothers mini-bond disputes and China's melamine scandal. Her last placement was at Bloomberg's Hong Kong bureau, where she had great fun writing real-time stories on Asian currencies and company earnings. A Hong Kong native fluent in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, Ng also co-produced a documentary on "cage dwellers" in Hong Kong -- called such because they live in squalid cagelike housing conditions -- for SBS Australia's "Dateline."

Lorea Solabarrieta has worked as a lifestyle TV presenter and script-writer, both in English and Chinese mediums with Hong Kong TV networks TVB and RTHK.

She currently presents business and financial news for the news and the "Asia Business Forecast," two programs on NHK World, the English-language channel for the Japanese cable broadcaster.

Lorea has danced from the age of 3 and was also a competitive swimmer and diver representing Hong Kong and British universities. She has received numerous scholarships such as the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to New York City and is an Omega and South China Morning Post honorary athlete-dancer and has represented Hong Kong as an Olympic Ambassador to the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

She has backpacked to over 45 countries. Tibet, Hawaii, the South American continent, and Nepal are her favorite places so far. Her goal in life is to see the whole world before she dies -- and to have fun doing it.

After a Loughborough University degree in Sport Science and English Literature, she decided to pursue the profession of Musical Theatre, working professionally in New York and London. She is now pursuing her Master of Arts in Journalism at Hong Kong University.

Phillippa Stewart graduated from Oxford University with a degree in modern history and politics. She is currently doing a master's of journalism program at the University of Hong Kong.

Stewart worked in business before coming to journalism. However, selling drinks didn't satisfy her craving for news. Now armed with TV, print and radio news experience, she has written for Time Out, the Telegraph, the Jakarta Globe and is a regular contributor to CNNGo Hong Kong.

Stewart's passion in life is traveling. She enjoys visiting new places and has explored most of South East Asia. Growing up in the United Kingdom and Europe has given her an international outlook in life and meeting people from other cultures is one of her favorite activities.

Suzanne van der Erf is a student at the University of Hong Kong and is now pursuing a master's degree in journalism. Born in the Netherlands, she has traveled to almost all the continents and has lived in the United States, the U.K. and Hong Kong. Van der Erf's interest in journalism began at the early age of 8, when she wrote and edited her own magazine and sold it to schoolmates. Her passion for journalism never really left her.

Besides working for ABC News on Campus, van der Erf works as a multi-media freelancer, doing video, photography and writing for a variety of publications, some of which are in her native language Dutch. A background in qualitative and quantitative market research has proved to be of use in her journalistic career. In her spare time, van der Erf enjoys updating her blog and managing her e-business website.