CityU excels in RGC funding schemes
City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has performed strongly in the latest funding exercise conducted by the Research Grants Council (RGC) with grants totaling $71.9 million for 119 research projects.
In this year’s round, CityU is ranked 1st in terms of the number of projects awarded under the Early Career Scheme (ECS), an inaugural initiative that supports research and teaching projects designed by junior faculty; and is ranked 1st in terms of the number of projects awarded and the level of funding for ECS in the Engineering Panel.
Under ECS, CityU secured a total of $17.3 million for 26 funded projects, with an overall success rate of 41.3%. Another 93 projects were funded to the tune of $54.6 million under the General Research Fund (GRF), a major component of the Earmarked Research Grant administered by the RGC.
“This noteworthy performance in the new ECS competition is a tribute to the quality and creativity of our young faculty,” said Professor Gregory Raupp, CityU Vice-President (Research and Technology). “I offer special congratulations to our winning faculty, and give my thanks to senior faculty mentors and department heads for providing valuable support.”
He added: “Overall the new GRF and ECS projects bring in substantial new financial investment for cutting-edge research and graduate student education, while new resources will be brought to the research programmes, resulting in new capability for educating students and conducting scholarly inquiry.”
In the Business Studies Panel for GRF, CityU ranked 1st in terms of the number of projects awarded and level of funding.
In other highlights, the RGC assessed 59% of CityU’s funded projects to be of “high quality”, and the Department of Information Systems achieved a 50% success rate in its GRF applications, the highest rate among the departments at CityU.
CityU was among the top three institutions in terms of the number of projects awarded in GRF and ECS in the following subject disciplines: Electrical & Electronic Engineering (2nd); Mechanical, Production & Industrial Engineering (3rd); and Computing Science & Information Technology (3rd).
Five CityU projects received GRF grants worth more than $1 million (see table below). Twelve CityU projects will receive 100% funding with no reduction in their budget.
Faculty (Department) | Project title | Fund awarded (HK$) |
Dr Ko Chi-chiu (Department of Biology and Chemistry) | Design and synthesis of dual emissive phosphorescent transition metal complexes | $1,150,000 |
Professor Li Ying (Department of Biology and Chemistry) | The prefrontal cortex as a key target of the visceral pain processing in adult rats following maternal separation stress in infancy | $1,104,588 |
Dr Eddie Ma Chi-him (Department of Biology and Chemistry) | Molecular determinants of critical period in peripheral nerve regeneration | $1,030,520 |
Professor Sun Weiwei (Department of Mathematics) | Numerical study for a class of nonlinear and strongly coupled parabolic systems from sweat transport | $1,025,000 |
Professor Zhou Dingxuan (Department of Mathematics) | Learning theory approach to minimum error entropy criteria and approximation analysis of some learning schemes | $1,025,000 |
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