President's Awards

Individual Award
(Early Career Research Excellence Award)

Dr Ivan POON Kai-tak
潘啟德博士
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology

Dr Poon’s research interests focus on interpersonal relationships and processes. Specifically, he examines the impacts of ostracism and social exclusion. He also investigates factors that facilitate people’s coping with interpersonal maltreatments.

As the Principal Investigator, Dr Poon secured Early Career Scheme (ECS) and General Research Fund (GRF) of the Research Grants Council in two consecutive years (2015/16 and 2016/17). As the Co-Investigator, Dr Poon obtained two GRFs and a competitive research grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China. In the recent 3 years, the total amount of research funding awarded to his research team was close to HKD 2.9 million. These great successes in highly competitive grant applications illustrated his ability to design and plan innovative research projects that have conceptual originality, scientific merits, academic rigor, and social impacts.

The research projects of Dr Poon have generated innovative research findings that carry both theoretical and practical significance. In the recent three years, he published 13 peer-refereed journal articles in top-tier international journals in psychology, including Aggressive Behavior, Computers in Human Behavior, Journal of Environmental Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Sex Roles, and Social Psychological and Personality Science. These high-quality research outputs in prestigious and influential journals further illustrate his research leadership and productivity.

Dr Poon is very keen to develop theory-driven intervention programmes aimed at helping people adaptively cope with ostracism, social exclusion, and related forms of interpersonal maltreatment. The high impact of his research was evidenced by his recent paper selected by the Editor-in-Chief of Aggressive Behavior as one of the few Featured Articles in 2017. His research was also highlighted in the website of the International Society for Research on Aggression.

Dr Poon has contributed to research development at different levels. He is the Co-Director of the Centre of Psychosocial Health. He is also a member of the Departmental RAE Committee.

Over the past three years, Dr Poon has successfully managed multiple lines of research programmes, acquired various competitive research grants, and generated high-quality impactful research outputs. Dr. Poon has established himself as a bright and prominent young researcher and made notable research contributions.