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Overview
of Research Activities of
The University of Hong Kong (HKU) seeks to sustain and enhance its excellent reputation as an institution of higher learning through outstanding teaching and world-class research, so as to produce rounded graduates with life-long abilities to provide leadership within the society they serve. The University’s research policy flows directly from this corporate vision. Its aim is to strengthen its capabilities in both basic and applied research within a culture that strives for excellence and relevance as well as collaboration. The University emphasizes innovative, high-impact and multidisciplinary research, and believes that a fine research record enhances the quality of research postgraduate education. It recognizes that it must be fully accountable for the effective management of the public and private resources it deploys towards its research aims, and welcomes the opportunity to act in partnership with the wider community to generate, disseminate and apply knowledge. The University is presently focusing more closely on
research of both international significance and local relevance, and
integrating its research with the needs of The University is therefore placing particular emphasis
on strategic interdisciplinary research in selected fields for the valuable
synergies it can produce. It is focusing its support and investment in eight
interdisciplinary strategic research areas of unique significance to 1. Biotechnology and drug development Within these eight strategic areas, the University has identified 21 themes. In some of these themes it has already achieved a global reputation. It is also striving to provide the research environment for new and important niche areas of research to emerge. While strengthening its research focus in this way, the University is also investing in the human resources necessary to sustain a research culture dedicated to excellence. It intends: (a) to recruit 200 additional professoriate faculty
members internationally by 2012; Within this broad strategic framework the University
continues to encourage research excellence in a number of important specific
areas. It continues to fund curiosity-driven research with small project
grants, and to incubate new research initiatives with seed-funding grants. It
continues, through its RPg reform policies, to
develop a culture of student-centred,
performance-based, and shared-responsibility research. It continues to
support specific research proposals with a China focus by supplying matching
funding for the central government’s ‘ Within the spirit of its corporate vision and its institutional policies on research, the University decided to place particular emphasis on several important aspects of these policies during the report period. Development of Strategic Research Areas and Themes The University continued to emphasize the eight strategic research areas and 21 subsidiary themes identified two years earlier as the focus of its interdisciplinary research endeavours, and considered possible incentives (e.g. prioritizing seed funding) to encourage further research in these areas. During the report period the University Research Committee (URC) monitored the progress made in developing each strategic research area and agreed that major points should be highlighted in the University’s Institutional Research Strategy Statement prepared for the UGC’s 2006 Research Assessment Exercise. Review of Measures to Enhance Institutional CERG Performance The URC reviewed the University’s internal mechanisms aimed at enhancing its CERG performance. These mechanisms, introduced after the 2003–04 CERG round, included merit awards for successful CERG projects, incentive awards for ‘fundable but not funded’ projects, top-up funding for ‘individual research grants’, and financial support for pre-submission external reviews. In particular, the possibility of replacing the existing merit awards by a CERG top-up grant was discussed, but after careful consideration of all relevant issues, including the practicalities in implementation, it was agreed that the existing package of incentives should be retained for the 2007–08 CERG exercise. RGC Support to Enhance Undergraduate Research Experience The URC considered the RGC’s new initiative of paying a monthly allowance to undergraduate students for participating in projects awarded CERG funding. This initiative was welcomed, and it was noted that some of the University’s faculties (such as Engineering and Law) already had schemes aimed at fostering the interest of talented and willing undergraduate students in research, and that Prof. L. S. Chan was a pioneer in institutionalizing undergraduate participation in research in the Faculty of Science. It was agreed that one or two designated URC members could work together with Prof. Chan to formulate a set of proposals to foster undergraduate research at the University, without being restricted to the parameters set by the RGC for its scheme, for further consideration by the URC. Introduction of a Central Committee Structure to Maintain Research Integrity Following a review of its research ethics procedures, the University introduced a central university-wide committee structure to give ethical clearance to research proposals from both clinical and non-clinical faculties involving human participants and live animals. During the report period the University’s Human Research Ethics Committee for Non-Clinical Faculties (responsible for reviewing research protocols from all faculties except those of Medicine and Dentistry) introduced operational guidelines and procedures, after consulting faculties on their views. A new research ethics website was created in November 2005. Introduction of a Research Output Prize under Outstanding Researcher Awards Scheme The University strengthened its institutional mechanisms for encouraging and recognizing outstanding research during the report period by establishing a new award scheme, the Research Output Prize, to reward the authors of outstanding individual publications such as refereed journal papers, books or CD-ROMs. Under this faculty-based scheme, the University will award up to ten prizes each year, and no more than one prize will be conferred by each participating faculty. Each award winner will receive a certificate and a monetary prize of HK$100,000 to further his or her research. The Research Output Prize will stand alongside the University’s existing Outstanding Researcher and Outstanding Young Researcher Awards. Establishment of Technology Transfer Office Following a fact-finding visit to five universities in
the Creation of New Posts under Centenary Recruitment Plan Arrangements were made towards the end of the report period for the allocation of 24 additional Research Assistant Professor posts to Faculties under the University’s Centenary Recruitment Plan, whereby 200 additional professoriate posts would be created by 2012 to cater for the four-year undergraduate curriculum and to boost the University’s research prowess. It was agreed that the allocation of these posts should be separate from the University’s usual RAP/PDF exercise, and that bids for these posts could be made not only by faculties but also (in view of the University’s focus on interdisciplinary research through its Strategic Research Areas and Themes) by particular Strategic Research Themes, in the proportion of 14 for faculties and 10 for SRTs. Preparations for Fourth Round of the Areas of Excellence Scheme A panel was formed to take a proactive approach in ensuring that the University would be able to submit at least half a dozen proposals of the highest quality and worthy of funding under the fourth round of the AoE Scheme.
The increasing importance of collaboration in research is
fully recognised by the University’s management and
by individual researchers. In addition to joining forces with local
institutions, the University is an active participant of Universitas
21, a consortium of leading universities around the world dedicated to the internationalisation of higher education. In November
2005 it hosted the annual Universitas 21 meeting,
during which the heads of the participant universities discussed the
development of the consortium’s e-learning arm and the further development of
collaborative online courses for undergraduate and postgraduate students at
these universities. Large numbers of individual researchers undertook collaborative projects during the report period with researchers in the PRC or elsewhere in the world across a wide range of activities, including joint research projects, co-authoring of papers, teaching or lecturing, providing consultancy or peer review services, supervising research students, and serving as external examiners. Highlights of some of these projects are given below. (a) The Genome Research Centre successfully completed
Hong Kong’s contribution to the International Haplotype
Mapping Project, a major international collaborative effort arising out of
the Human Genome Project which involves scientists from the (b) The University is cooperating with three prestigious Chinese universities (South China University of Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University) in a 20-month ‘RFID Application Enabling Middleware for Enterprise Applications’ research and development project initiated by the University’s E-Business Technology Institute, with the objective of enhancing the competitiveness of the Pearl River Delta region as a potential global manufacturing and logistics hub. Funding for this project has been provided from the Guangdong-Hong Kong Technology Cooperation Funding Scheme under the HKSAR Government’s Innovation and Technology Fund. (c) The University’s Li Ka Shing
Faculty of Medicine established an
A number of research highlights in 2005–06 are listed below: League Table Rankings Earlier this year (2006) the Times Higher Education
Supplement ranked the The results of the 2006–07 CERG exercise were announced in June 2006. In this exercise the University submitted a total of 463 applications, of which 215 (46.47%) were approved. For the ninth time in the past ten years it received the lion’s share of the funding. It was awarded HK$146.66 million—30% of the total CERG funding allocation of HK$489 million. This success was achieved in an increasingly competitive climate. Innovation Technology Support Programme (ITSP) Awards from the Innovation and Technology Fund under the Government’s Innovation Technology Support Programme (ITSP) have been an increasingly important source of funding for the University since the programme’s introduction in 1999. The University has had 44 projects approved in the past six years (24% of the 186 projects approved in total since 1999), and has been granted funding of HK$208.11 million for these projects. During the 2005–06 academic year five of the University’s applications under the ITSP were approved (up to June 2006), and funding of HK$26.39 million was awarded in respect of these projects. NSFC/RGC Joint Research Scheme The University also did well in 2005– Croucher Foundation ASIs The Croucher Foundation sponsors a number of Advanced Study Institutes (ASIs) each year, to enable experts in a particular field to meet and conduct advanced tuition on a defined topic. Four ASIs previously proposed by the University were conducted during the report period: (a) ‘Science and Applications of Spin Electronics’, by
Prof. F. C. Zhang (Department of Physics), on 15–19 August 2005; In December 2005 the University proposed four ASIs for 2006/7. The ASI ‘Molecular Genetics and Cell Signaling in Cancer and Cancer Metastasis’, by Prof. I. O. L. Ng (Department of Pathology), was approved, attracting funding of HK$600,000. Croucher Foundation International Conferences and Seminars The Croucher Foundation also
provides sponsorship for international conferences and seminars in the fields
of natural science, technology or medicine. Such events must be of direct
benefit to (a) 29–31 August 2005, ‘Superresolution
Image Processing: Theory, Algorithms and Applications’, by Dr M. K. P. Ng
(Department of Mathematics); Academic Honours The University’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Lap-Chee Tsui, was elected an
Honorary Fellow of the Prof. J. S. M. Peiris
(Department of Microbiology) was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May
Prof. S. T. Fan, Sun Chieh Yeh Chair of Hepatobiliary
Surgery, was elected to membership of the Prof. D. Yang (Department of Chemistry) was one of the
recipients of the 2006 Eli Lilly Scientific Excellence Award in Prof. V. W. W. Yam, Head of the University’s Department
of Chemistry and a member of the Prof. G. W. K. Tang (Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology) received an Outstanding Women Professionals Award from the Hong Kong Women Professionals and Entrepreneurs Association. The University encourages and rewards distinguished research achievement by its staff by conferring its own outstanding research awards at a well-attended annual ceremony. In November 2005 the University conferred the following research awards: (i) Outstanding Research
Student Supervisor Awards (ii) Outstanding Young Researcher Awards (iii) Outstanding Researcher Awards The University also made an exceptional Distinguished
Research Achievement Award to Prof. F. C. Zhang (Department of Physics) for
his internationally-acclaimed work in the field of theoretical condensed
matter physics. Besides a number of international conferences funded by the Croucher Foundation and mentioned earlier, several important international research conferences were organized during the report period by the University. On 6–8 April 2006 the University’s Centre of Urban Planning and Environmental Management (CUPEM) hosted the 12th International Sustainable Development Research Conference, at which more than 300 papers were presented by researchers and practitioners in the fields of sustainable development, sustainable cities, environmental policy and industrial ecology. The conference also saw the launch of the International Sustainable Development Research Society, aimed at developing an international network of researchers interested in sustainable development. On 2 June 2006 the University held an international symposium on ‘World economic prospects and the future of business in China’ with speakers from the UK, USA and Hong Kong, to discuss how global companies should refine their China strategy at a time when prices of energy, precious metals and commodities had reached record levels. On 2–3 June 2006 the University’s Faculty of Education and Centre of Advancement in Special Education hosted an international conference, on ‘Reform, Inclusion & Missions: Towards a New Era of Special Education’, at which scholars of international repute from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, China, and Taiwan considered a number of important topics in special education, including the future of inclusive education, how diversity in learning was effectively addressed in the curriculum and in the classroom, how tertiary institutions should prepare and equip their teachers to take on the new roles, and how important community stakeholders could contribute to the reform process. On 8–9 June 2006 the University hosted an international
symposium on the theme ‘Language issues in English-medium universities across
State Key Laboratories Two of the University’s laboratories were accredited by The State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases
will conduct research on emerging viruses, bacteria, fungi and anti-microbial
resistance. The State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science will
pursue interdisciplinary research aimed at improving human health, enhancing
the quality of education and communication and discovering the neuro-physiological basis of learning and perception. Published Research The University has an excellent record of published research, both in discipline-specific journals and in more high-profile publications such as Science, Nature, and The Lancet. As far as its academic publishing is concerned, it has the highest number of refereed publications, both in absolute terms and expressed as a ratio of publications per staff member, of any UGC-funded institution. According to the latest available statistics, for 2004/5 (see RGC Annual Report 2005), the University had 5,046 peer-reviewed refereed publications, or 4.0 publications per staff member. The University does particularly well in scientific publications. According to statistics published by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), there were a total of 114,610 citations of 15,832 HKU papers in journals tracked by the ISI between 1996 and April 2006. This was the highest number of citations of any UGC-funded institution. In 2005 the University had 2,712 publications in journals tracked by the ISI, again more than any other UGC-funded institution. The ISI also ranked 59 HKU academic staff among the world’s top 1% of scientists. Several testimonies to the excellence of the University’s
published research were made during the report period. To give just one
example, Dr M. C. L. Chau ( Patents The University has filed 585 patents in various parts of
the world since 1998, mostly in the |
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