Max Lu

Lu has been appointed to the Boards of UKRI,[15] National Physical Laboratory, Universities UK and the Leadership Council of the National Centre for Universities and Business. He was also made a Deputy Lieutenant of Surrey[16] and is a patron of Transform Housing & Support.[17] He has an honorary degree from the University of Strathclyde.[18] In September 2019, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.[19]

Lu, who helped found and is a board member of the Australian Research Council (ARC), won its Federation Fellowship in both 2003 and 2008.[20][21] He has also been named among Australia's Top 100 Most Influential Engineers, in 2013,[22] being named to the Queensland Greats Award this same year.[23] In 2014, Lu was awarded an Australia-China Achievement Award for Education[24] and in 2017 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia.[25][26]

Lu has also been given several awards from other nations or international bodies. They are: Orica Award, 2001;[27] Le Fevre Prize, 2002;[28] RK Murphy Medal, 2003;[29] ExxonMobil Award, 2007;[27] China International Science and Technology Cooperation Award, 2011;[30] Chemeca Medal, 2011;[27] Japan Chemical Society Lecture Award, 2015;[31] and the P.V. Danckwerts Lecture, 2016.[32] He was elected a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2019.[33]

The choice to twin Guildford, the town of the University of Surrey, and Lu's hometown of Dongying, as well as Lu's involvement in the process, was a subject of controversy for Guildford council in 2017. The Guildford Alderman the Hon. Bernard Parke noted that unlike the town's previous twinning agreement, the public and council consultations had been by-passed for the partnership with Dongying.[34] Other councillors also criticised the expedience, as they had not been informed of the intentions to twin with the city and had been in talks with other potential partners for some time, plans that had to be scrapped. Lu's involvement was criticised as lacking "openness and transparency", with some councillors also asserting that "due diligence" in the approval of the city had not been performed. The council leader Paul Spooner responded by saying that he had needed to act quickly in order to travel to China with Lu, and the whole council voted not to accept financial assistance for travel costs offered by Dongying.[35]

In June 2019, Lu's connection to Liaoning was being used by the county of Surrey to push a partnership for the county with the Chinese province.[36]

In 2016, Lu's pay and bonuses at the University of Queensland, totalling AUS$736,600, came under fire in a piece discussing the university "crying poor ... [but giving] their senior executives larger and larger pay packets while doing everything in their power to squeeze the salaries of their employees"; the article noted that Lu and many of his peers earned more than the heads of government departments and business CEOs.[37]

In 2018, Channel 4's Dispatches broadcast a report on the pay and expenses of British university officials, including revealing that Lu was given £1,600 to relocate his family dog. The University of Surrey responded by saying that this was "reasonable relocation expenses".[38] It was also reported that the university paid for Lu's membership to the elite Athenaeum Club, London, at £2,610 a year. The university claimed this was a "cost-effective" solution for Lu to have private meetings in London.[39] In an article about the documentary's findings, The Guardian listed various expenses but concluded that "Few, though, can beat the £1,600 spent on relocating a pet dog from Australia to Britain". Both the article and Robert Halfon MP compared the dog relocation expense to the "Duck Island" incident from a 2009 MP expense scandal.[40] The Spectator compared Professor Lu to the former Chinese Communist propaganda minister, Lu Wei, and said that though the relocation expense was "small change" it reflects the lack of moral authority in universities that strip lecturers of pensions and give students decades of debt.[41]

Also in the year, more controversy arose over Vice Chancellors' remuneration, with Lu among the highest paid in the UK. The university responded to the controversy by claiming that his pay had been overstated, and "insisted that the Office for Students should have stated the basic salary of [Lu] as £314,000 in 2017-18"; it had been stated as £364,000, with the Office for Students telling the Financial Times that "it was £364,000, including a £50,000 contribution to his pension".[42] Lu had taken a pay cut from his previous position in Australia when he moved to Surrey;[42] his total 2017/18 remuneration was £419,000.[43]

The controversy reappeared in early 2019, specifically for Lu, when the University of Surrey announced that they would have to fire staff because of a deficit.[44][45] The university magazine, The Stag, published an article titled 'Paygate: The Problem with Surrey's Vice-Chancellor', in which it compared his "performance-related bonuses" to the university's actual performance.[46]

In May 2019, the staff and students of the University of Surrey held a no confidence vote against the university management, with coverage largely focused on Lu's leadership.[43] Of staff who voted, 96% gave a vote of no confidence in "the Vice-Chancellor and Executive Board".[47] The all-staff vote was approved by all three trade unions represented at the university, in a meeting held with the largest member attendance seen.[48] Concerns raised by staff specifically include "Lu's language which suggests staff are a cost rather than an asset", according to the University and College Union, while the Students' Union was specifically concerned about the closure of many arts courses at the university despite a "healthy" number of applications for them.[47] Students who wanted a "no" vote hoped this result would make the university management "engage with staff and students and discuss changes";[43] only one student ran the campaign supporting the management, though the debate between union students was said to hold "twinges of sympathy for Max Lu".[49]

In May 2019, after some controversy regarding Chinese technology firm Huawei, accused of spying for the Chinese government, continuing to work on the development of 5G communications (a project housed at the University of Surrey, among others), Lu spoke in support of the company and told reporters that universities should ignore geopolitics and not take any rash action without "a large body" of proof of Huawei's espionage. He suggested that even with evidence a complete ban would restrict universities' freedom and neutrality, and to change research based on this would prevent a university from making "a sustained contribution to society".[50]