Faculty Development Scheme (FDS) 2025/26 Exercise
- The quality of proposals varied across subjects. The high-quality proposals were well-articulated, featuring sound methodologies, experiment designs and presented with well-argued significance. Some weak proposals were poorly written, lacking clear research focus, well-argued theoretical framework and appropriate research methodology.
- Improvement in formulating the impact statements and the research objectives was observed. Some proposals presented overly ambitious and unachievable impacts, failing to address the limitations. The robustness in the research methodology of some proposals was also weak and more details on data collection and analyses were warranted. It is advisable to address the limitations of the proposed research and how the limitations should be tackled in the proposal.
- Some proposals covered numerous interesting topical issues, featuring sound methodologies and experiment designs, but some required improvement in terms of incremental contributions to the academic literature.
- Some proposals demonstrated good quality with innovative ideas, focusing on pressing research topics such as artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analysis. However, the methodologies in some proposals would require further enhancement to ensure feasibility and impactful outcomes.
- Some proposals requested substantial funding support to hire supporting staff, resulting in excessive budget requests. The Panel considered that Principal Investigators should provide detailed justifications for each requested item.