A) The Exercise

1.	Number of applications received	29
2.	Number of full proposals received	13
3.	Number of proposals recommended for funding	6
4.	Success rate (over the number of applications):	20.69%
5.	Budget	$150 million
6.	Total funding amount from RGC	$149.659 million1

 ¹ Excluding on-costs.

B) Assessment Committee’s Comments for Applicants’ Reference

1. Quality of applications (i.e. strengths, weaknesses and gaps of proposals):

• The Committee was impressed with the quality and team composition of the proposals under STG 2023/24 exercise. The proposals submitted were competitive and within the scope of topics as the first year of STG.
• The Committee was pleased with the quality of the reviews from the external reviewers and considered these reviews could provide constructive and useful advice for the applicants to improve their research proposals.
• For proposals submitted under Topics 1 and 4, the strengths were in the quality of the teams and the innovative approaches.
• For proposals submitted under Topics 2, 3 and 5, the weakest aspect was it was not clear how research could be transferred to local applications. It would be good if the project teams would start planning collaboration with industrial partners when preparing the proposal.
• Proposals to be funded are timely and extremely important to help Hong Kong overcome imminent challenges and tap emerging opportunities. The involvement of industrial partners would help transferring research results to application.

2. Other comments:

• It was nice to see at least one proposal with young people as project coordinator.