Institutional Development Scheme (IDS) Research Infrastructure Grant 2025/26 Exercise
  1. The overall quality of proposals in this round was mediocre and unimpressive with no proposal selected for funding. While some project teams were able to identify important areas or interesting topics to work on, the proposals lacked a clear research focus and feasible implementation plan.  The project teams were advised to use better research methodology designs or up to date theoretical framework.
  1. Though some proposals demonstrated good research intentions, they lacked clarification on the novelty and uniqueness of the proposed infrastructures. Some proposals failed to clearly articulate the rationales for their studies and appeared to rely on technology without providing solid arguments for their implementation plans.  Project teams are encouraged to provide sufficient details of their researches to differentiate their proposed setups from related works in the fields.
  1. Some proposals were weak in elaborating on the academic contributions and how the research capacity of the teaching staff at their institutions could be enhanced.
  1. The budget of some proposals was not well justified with excessive budget requests. An itemised breakdown for each budget item should be provided in the applications with full justifications.