The UGC supports the institutions' academic research activities through the allocation of the block grant, funding for research postgraduate places and various competitive research funding schemes such as Areas of Excellence, General Research Fund, Collaborative Research Fund and Joint Research Schemes with the Mainland and overseas countries. Through advocacy and financial incentives, the UGC also encourages institutions further to strengthen and broaden their endeavours in transferring knowledge, technology and other forms of research outputs into real socio-economic benefits and impact for the community and businesses.

In 2009-10, good progress has been made on new initiatives on research matters in the higher education sector of Hong Kong. The Research Endowment Fund started to earn investment income, thus providing greater funding stability and certainty to institutions' research. A portion of the Research Endowment Fund will also be used to support the Theme-based Research Scheme, so that institutions may work on research proposals on themes of a longer-term nature and strategically beneficial to the development of Hong Kong. Furthermore, additional resources have been given to provide an extra 800 research postgraduate places by phases starting from 2009/10. Among them, 135 places have been reserved for the new Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme. New stream of recurrent funding also started to flow to the institutions to strengthen their endeavours in knowledge transfer.

The UGC established a Research Group to advise on the strategy to promote research in the higher education sector. The UGC has continued its efforts in taking the research to the community by organising lectures and publishing newsletters to share the research findings and policy recommendations with the community.

(a) Research Expenditure and Funding

The UGC-funded institutions continue to pursue research vigorously. Their reported aggregate expenditure on research in 2008/09 amounted to $6,650 million, representing 41% of their total departmental expenditure, and 0.41% of Hong Kong GDP. The total research output items was 24 634, of which 17 719 were refereed.

Visit by the RGC to PolyU on 11 June 2009

UGC and RGC funding, in the form of block grants and earmarked grants respectively, constituted the bulk of research funding for the institutions. Together, the two sources of funding made up about 77% of the total research expenditure in 2008/09 - breakdown is at Chart 6.

(b) Earmarked Research Grant (ERG)

Apart from the block grants allocated by the UGC, the ERG is the largest single source of funding for supporting academic research in Hong Kong's higher education - and is managed and disbursed by the RGC. For 2009/10, the RGC administered a total of $745 million through its various funding schemes, an increase of about 14% as compared with 2008/09. There are four main funding schemes under the RGC: the General Research Fund; the Collaborative Research Fund; the Direct Allocation; and the Joint Research Schemes. The distribution amongst the major funding schemes is set out in Chart 7.

CRF Symposium December 2009 Poster Display

Details of how these schemes operate and the success rates can be found on the RGC website and in its Annual Report.

(c) Research Endowment Fund

The $18 billion Research Endowment Fund (REF) was established in February 2009 after approval was granted by the Legislative Council. The Fund has been set up as a trust under the Permanent Secretary for Education Incorporated (the Trustee). The UGC advises the Trustee on the policies and procedures governing the operation, development and investment of the Fund and the provision of grants to be set aside from the Fund for distribution to the institutions for the purpose of conducting, promoting and assisting research. Out of the $18 billion, the investment income of at least $14 billion will be used to replace, from the 2010/11 academic year onwards, the bulk of the existing earmarked research grants distributed annually to the RGC, thus providing greater funding stability. In addition, the investment income from up to $4 billion of the REF will be deployed to support theme-based research, thus allowing the institutions to work on research proposals on themes of a longer-term nature and strategically beneficial to the development of Hong Kong.　

(d) Fifth Round Areas of Excellence (AoE) Scheme

The "Areas of Excellence" Scheme was in place to facilitate the formation of quality research consortia to explore important questions across a broad range of disciplines, and thus it buttresses inter-institutional and inter-disciplinary collaborative links. The longer term funding together with the allocation of RPg places provided for by the scheme enable high calibre research teams to pursue high impact and forward looking projects.　

The following five proposals were selected for funding in the 5th Round AoE exercise in September 2009:　

● Institute of Network Coding (co-ordinated by CUHK)

● The Historical Anthropology of Chinese Society (co-ordinated by CUHK)

● Center for Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma Research (co-ordinated by HKU)

● Institute of Molecular Functional Materials (co-ordinated by HKU)

● Theory, Modeling, and Simulation of Emerging Electronics (co-ordinated by HKU)

The total funding amount for the five proposals was $378 million (including 15% on-costs), and about 60 research postgraduate places were allocated.

The UGC provides funding to support research activities of institutions by means of the following ways:　

(a) Research element of the block grant;

(b) Research Postgraduate places; and

(c) RGC funding.

Both the UGC and institutions have the common wish to enhance the competitive element of research funding, and improve the existing methods of allocating research funding. In this connection, the Research Group started conducting two major reviews in 2009-10. One was on the way to conduct the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) which has been the main factor affecting the allocation of the Research element of the block grant; and the other one on how to enhance the effectiveness and competitiveness in the allocation of RPg places and research funding. The Research Group will draw up recommendations for consulting the institutions. It is intended that this will tie in with the Higher Education Review and with the planning of the 2012-15 triennium funding.　

The Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme was launched in September 2009 to attract the best and brightest students around the world (including Hong Kong), irrespective of their country of origin and ethnic background, to pursue their PhD studies and research in UGC-funded institutions.　

The Fellowship provides a monthly stipend of $20,000 and a conference and research-related travel allowance of $10,000 per year for the awardees for a period of three years. It is expected about 135 PhD Fellowships will be awarded each year starting from 2010/11.

To promote to the international academic community the Scheme and Hong Kong's PhD programmes, and more importantly, Hong Kong's institutions, the RGC Chairman, and representatives from institutions conducted outreach visits in September and October 2009 to distinguished universities in various countries in Southeast Asia and the Indian Sub-continent. Some 3 000 applicants from 100 countries submitted their applications by the deadline on 1 December 2009. The result of the 2010/11 exercise of the Scheme was announced in March 2010.　

This prestigious Scheme will unite top international research postgraduate students and Hong Kong's world-class research institutions. We hope that it will nurture the best students excelling in their chosen fields of research, with elevated knowledge and global outlook, and poised to cope with the challenges of a changing world.

Information Session on the Hong Kong PhD  Fellowship Scheme in Hong Kong	Information Session on the Hong Kong PhD  Fellowship Scheme in Pakistan

(D) Knowledge Transfer

Not only does the UGC provide funding support for research activities in institutions, it also promotes and incentivises the transfer of knowledge - in both technological and non-technological disciplines - between institutions and the society, with a view to bringing about socio-economic impacts and improvements to the community and businesses.　

In 2009/10, the UGC introduced an additional stream of recurrent funding earmarked for the institutions to strengthen and broaden their endeavours in "knowledge transfer". Institutions have responded favourably to the new funding: not only do they embrace "knowledge transfer" as the third pillar of their core activities (together with teaching and research), they have all set forth institutional-wide strategy, policies, action plans and performance targets to systemise and intensify their efforts in knowledge transfer which are commensurate with the institutions' respective roles and missions. Institutions will submit annual reports to the UGC to account for their progress in this regard.　

With the institutions' concerted and more conscious effort in knowledge transfer, academics and researchers are given more opportunities to be inspired by forging closer ties with the wider community, and the community may enjoy greater, realisable benefits from the knowledge transferred from the institutions. This two-way process enriches institutions' research policies, and thereby enhancing the international competitiveness of the local higher education sector.

Chart 8: Allocation of Knowledge Transfer Recurrent Funding to Institutions, 2009/2010