President's Awards

Individual Award
(Early Career Research Excellence Award)

Dr Jesus Alfonso Daep DATU
Assistant Professor, Department of Special Education and Counselling

Dr Jesus Alfonso DATU is a well-being scientist, whose research interests focus on how and why well-being factors and interventions affect psychological health, academic success, and other adaptive behaviours in various contexts.

In the capacity of Principal Investigator, Dr Datu secured Early Career Scheme (ECS) funding from the Research Grants Council in 2019/2020. The project on how grit may predict learning processes and outcomes in mathematics and science has important implications for designing instructional initiatives to strengthen STEM Education in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and the Philippines.

Dr Datu has published 16 journal articles in reputable journals, such as the Journal of School Psychology, Journal of Happiness Studies, Journal of Positive Psychology, and Youth & Society, and two book chapters in edited books over the past three years. He has a Google Scholar h-index of 17. His outstanding research record demonstrates that Dr Datu has excelled in the field of positive psychology and educational psychology.

Dr Datu has contributed to international academic and professional organizations in various capacities. For example, he is on the Editorial Board of School Psychology (formerly known as the School Psychology Quarterly), School Psychology International, and PLOS One. He is also a Consulting Editor for Educational Psychology: An International Journal of Experimental Educational Psychology. He served as a Lead Guest Editor of a Special Issue of the Philippine Journal of Psychology. The Special Issue showcased investigations authored by Filipino researchers on the antecedents and consequences of a happy life in the Philippine setting.

Within the University, Dr Datu has shown his dedication to engaging in collegial research. He has been involved in many University research-related activities, and taken up a number of research positions in the University. He is a Research Associate in the Integrated Centre for Wellbeing (i-WELL), and FEHD Representative for the Human Research Ethics Committee. These University-based research engagements clearly show his potential to efficiently collaborate with other researchers in the University to align his research programs with the interdisciplinary and cross-departmental foci of University research initiatives.