President's Awards

Individual Award
(Early Career Research Excellence Award)

Dr HOU Wai-kai
侯維佳博士
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology

In his work, Dr Wai-Kai Hou seeks to integrate multiple levels of analyses for explicating the psychology and ecology of stress. His current research focuses on understanding everyday processes and mechanisms pertinent to adaptation and resilience. Other topics he focuses on include emotional processes and flexibility, social determinants of mental health, and psychological and social adaptation among people with chronic medical conditions and their caregivers.

In the past three years, as the Principal Investigator, Dr Hou has secured HK$2.17 million in grants from the Early Career Scheme (ECS), General Research Fund (GRF) and Fulbright-RGC Hong Kong Senior Research Scholar Award of the Research Grants Council (RGC). Since 2015, he has had 11 papers (10 as the lead author) published in high-impact international journals, including the Journal of Affective Disorders, the Journal of Counseling Psychology, and Psycho-Oncology.

Dr Hou was invited to be a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at Teachers College, Columbia University, in 2016-2017, and collaborated with a number of colleges in the US, including Columbia University, Loyola University Chicago, Rush University Medical Center, and UCLA. Dr Hou has been a Member and National Representative (Hong Kong SAR, China) of the Stress and Anxiety Research (STAR) Society since 2015; a reviewer for over 20 international peer-reviewed journals; and a member of the review board/referee panel for local and overseas research funding agencies.

To contribute to society, Dr Hou has been broadening the social impact of his research expertise in health psychology through knowledge-transfer activities, including public talks, professional training workshops, and expert consultancy to non-government organizations, such as Diabetes Hongkong and Chi Heng Foundation Limited.

At EdUHK, Dr Hou has demonstrated his research leadership by taking up various concurrent posts. He is currently Director of the Centre for Psychosocial Health; he has been Coordinator of the Psychological and Behavioural Sciences Laboratory in 2011-15 and from 2017 to the present; he has been a Faculty Human Research Ethics Committee member of the Faculty of Education and Human Development since 2016; and he has been a member of the Departmental Research and Development Committee, Department of Psychology, in 2012-2014 and from 2016 to the present.