President's Awards

Research Excellence Award

Dr Stephen CHOW Cheuk-fai
周卓輝博士
Associate Professor
Department of Science and Environmental Studies

Dr Chow Cheuk Fai, Stephen’s research interests lie mainly in influential areas of supramolecular analytical chemistry such as sensors and catalysts, which contribute to the field of environmental studies.

Dr Chow has been the Principal Investigator of four successful external research projects in the area of analytical chemistry and the environment, with total funding of over HK$2 million. He was awarded a General Research Fund grant from the Research Grants Council in 2015. He also obtained a Knowledge Transfer Fund grant from the PRC Guangdong Province and Ministry in 2013 to lead a project that aimed to detect toxic pollutants in drinking water in a sensitive and selective way. In 2016, he successfully received a grant of nearly HK$3 million from the HSBC Foundation for transferring his research results into an environmental education project that aims to educate our next generation about the importance of plastic waste management.

Over the past three years, Dr Chow has published 25 international refereed journal papers with more than half ranked within the top 10% in the SCI, SSCI and SJR international databases. Three articles on sensing or molecular recognition are highly recognised and highlighted as the cover stories in Analyst, Chemistry-A European Journal and Chemical Communications (all ranked in the top 10%). In addition, Dr Chow successfully filed a Hong Kong patent for an 8-Compartment Plastic Recycling Bin to transfer his research results to local education and the recycling industry.

To further enhance the impact of his research through knowledge transfer (KT), Dr Chow has held the KT Directorship since July 2014 to facilitate the enhancement of institutional policies and initiatives on KT. His vision is to not only transfer his academic results to the community, but also to support our Institute’s KT at-large.