Areas of Excellence Scheme
(A) The Exercise
1 Including two applications transferred from the Theme-based Research Scheme
2 Excluding two applications which did not comply with the page limit and/or formatting requirements stipulated in the “Guidance Documents on Submission of Full Proposals” and were returned without further processing as endorsed by the CRPSC
3 Inclusive of indirect costs / on-costs
4 Including $10 million for exploratory project. The university matching for the exploratory project is subject to a revised one-year budget by the project team upon approval from the relevant Committee.
(B) Selection Panel's Comments for Applicants' Reference
1. Quality of applications (i.e. strengths, weaknesses and gaps of proposals):
| 1. | Number of applications received | 331 |
| 2. | Number of full proposals received | 112 |
| 3. | Number of proposals recommended for funding | 3 (including one exploratory proposal) |
| 4. | Success rate (over the number of applications): | 9.1 % |
| 5. |
Total approved budget of the funded projects: | $153.192 million3 |
| 6. |
Total funding amount from the RGC | $143.874 million34 |
2 Excluding two applications which did not comply with the page limit and/or formatting requirements stipulated in the “Guidance Documents on Submission of Full Proposals” and were returned without further processing as endorsed by the CRPSC
3 Inclusive of indirect costs / on-costs
4 Including $10 million for exploratory project. The university matching for the exploratory project is subject to a revised one-year budget by the project team upon approval from the relevant Committee.
(B) Selection Panel's Comments for Applicants' Reference
1. Quality of applications (i.e. strengths, weaknesses and gaps of proposals):
- The proposals were generally of very high standard, internationally competitive and worthy of consideration for funding under AoE Scheme, leading to healthy discussion and exchange of thoughts among panel members. The Panel was impressed by the composition of the project teams, which were not only led by world-leading experts in respective disciplines but also comprised many young and enthusiastic researchers.
- The Panel was encouraged to note that project teams had internalised previous experience and significantly improved the quality of their proposals in their re-submissions.
- The topics of the submitted proposals were timely and many were at the forefront of basic research in relevant aspects. The proposals clearly met the most stringent international standards because of the quality of the team and of different actions planned.
- The proposals from the Humanities and Social Sciences Panel were ambitious in scope and scale which tackled complex issues. The teams could benefit from limiting the geographical scope to a smaller number of sites to demonstrate feasibility.
- Collaboration between members in Q&A session would be a merit in demonstrating team dynamics. Project teams are encouraged to designate subject specialists to answer questions under that particular fields so as to demonstrate stronger collaboration between members.
- Project teams are also encouraged to address external reviewers’ comments during the interview, and to highlight enhance thematic significance as well as to establish project feasibility of their proposals.