Announced by the Financial
Secretary in the 2008-2009 Budget, an $18 billion
Research Endowment Fund was established to provide a
steady and continuous source of funding towards
research projects selected by the Research Grants
Council (RGC). Part of
the fund will be channeled towards special research
themes related to Hong Kong's long-term development
and strategic direction. To this aim, a Steering
Committee with the RGC's
Chairman among its committee members, was set up by
the Education Bureau (EDB) to identify the themes.
Professor Roland Chin, Chairman of the RGC, says
that $4 billion of the $18 billion funding will be
allocated to these special research themes. To
optimize resources and create high impact, funding
should be focused on a small
number of themes most beneficial to Hong Kong's
strategic development and where the local academia
has a competitive advantage. If all goes smoothly,
it is estimated that funding
applications will be called early next year. After a
rigorous international peer review process, grants
will be allocated starting in late 2010.
In addition, the RGC will concentrate its
resources to provide better support to the best
research projects – giving full grants to the
projects which have the highest quality. According
to Professor Chin, the Council in the past received
over 2,000 applications a year, of which 900 are
funded, yielding a success rate of nearly 40%. Under
the new practice of providing better support to the
best projects, the success rate will be expected to
drop to around 30% due to resource reallocation and
limited budget. He further points out that this is
an international best practice which will aise Hong
Kong's research excellence to a
higher level.
Professor Chin further emphasizes that in view of
the current global environment, Hong Kong must step
up its competitiveness in the world market to
prepare for future challenges. That is why it is
essential to attract the world's best research
talents to Hong Kong serving the city and the
Region.
Established this year by the RGC, the Hong Kong PhD
Fellowship Scheme aims at attracting the best and
brightest students in the world to pursue their PhD
programs in the institutions funded by the
University Grants Committee. Not only can this raise
the quality of local research, but it also
internationalizes our research environment by
introducing different cultures to the local academic
scene. It is estimated that 135 PhD fellowships will
be awarded annually beginning in the 2010/2011
academic year, and local institutions will be
actively involved in the student recruitment
efforts. The application deadline for the 2010/2011
academic year is
1 December 2009. The RGC has
posted relevant information on its website:
www.rgc.edu.hk/hkphd
To promote this new scheme as well as Hong Kong
universities, Professor Chin plans to visit many
universities in selected Asian countries with local
institution representatives between September and
December. His itinerary will cover India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and
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The
Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme will be publicized
worldwide, explains Professor Chin. Local
universities and universities in the Chinese
Mainland, Europe and the U.S. are already
well-connected through research collaboration and
various exchange programs for years which have
become efficient channels to recruit research
talents to Hong Kong. Besides, rising academic
research standards in Asia in recent years point to
the need to build and strengthen relations with
other Asian universities, which is one important
goal of this trip, he adds.
According to Professor Chin, academic research in
Hong Kong has always strived for world-class
standards. New initiatives like the Research
Endowment Fund and the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship
Scheme will invariably attract top-tier talents to
conduct their research studies in Hong Kong . In
addition to the training of research talents, Hong
Kong's researchers have been producing excellent
work and disseminating their research results world
wide by publishing them in renowned academic
journals and books. Some of the research work
addresses important local social and economic issues
which are also of great interest to the worldwide
community. These publications are widely read all
over the world, making great contributions to the
betterment of human kind.
"Of course it would be ideal if Hong Kong could have
its own world-acclaimed academic journals and
publishing press. Building up the reputation of a
journal usually takes years, and so it all relies on
the continuous efforts of our local academia to make
this a reality someday," says Professor Chin. |
Professor Roland Chin
Chairman, Research Grants Council
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The RGC Chairman, Prof Roland
Chin had a meeting with Dr. Antonio Scarpa, Director
of Center for Scientific Review, National Institutes
of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services in Hong Kong on 29 July 2009. They
exchanged a lot of valuable information about the
operation of research funding in the US and Hong
Kong. NIH is keen on recruiting more external
reviewers to review its research applications, and
also welcomes research application outside the US.
The RGC would like to appeal to local scholars to
apply to NIH for research funding and offer to be
its external reviewers. For details, please visit
http://csr.nih.gov
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