President's Awards

The President’s Award for Outstanding Performance in Research was established to honour research excellence among individual academic staff members or teams, and to recognise, encourage and reward outstanding research of significant benefit to the wider community. To accommodate differences in the developmental paths taken by academic staff and the need to enhance the research culture of the University, two award categories were established: the Research Excellence Award and the Early Career Research Excellence Award. The Research Excellence Award honours research excellence exhibited by either teams or individual academic staff members at or above the rank of Associate Professor in the three years preceding the award. The Early Career Research Excellence Award honours research excellence exhibited by either teams or individual early career academic staff members at the rank of Assistant Professor in the three years preceding the award.

A selection panel chaired by the President, Professor Stephen CHEUNG Yan-leung, considered the nominees (and self-nominees) for the two categories of the Award. The other members of the panel were Professor NG Tai-kai (lay Council member), Professor John P BURNS (external member from a local higher education institution), Professor LUI Tai-lok, Vice President (Research and Development), Professor CHOU Kee-lee and Professor David CONIAM (two representatives elected by and from the Academic Board) and Professor WONG Wing-sze (previous recipient of the President’s Award for Outstanding Performance in Research).

The selection panel used the following criteria, measured over the three years preceding the award, to assess the nominees for both award categories. First, their success in securing competitive external research grants (particularly relevant to the Research Excellence Award); second, the quality and quantity of their research output; third, the extent of their knowledge transfer to society; fourth, the academic, professional and social outcomes of their research for policy making, education and the community; and finally, the track record of their research leadership (particularly relevant to the Research Excellence Award) and active contribution to the University in research.