Achievements Highlights 2020-2022

• 2020/21 was a fruitful year in terms of research outcomes for the University. The 2020 Research Grant Council (RGC) Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) results indicate that for three disciplines, more than 60% of their research outputs were rated as “world-leading” or “internationally excellent”. These disciplines are “earth sciences (including oceanography, meteorology) and other physical sciences (including environmental science)” (67%), “education” (63%), and “geography” (62%). The excellence ratings of research in the education discipline should be highlighted as it consists of the highest number of units of assessment and researchers. Other competitive disciplines that are “world-leading” or “internationally excellent” are “Chinese language & literature (55%)”, “psychology” (44%), “computer studies / science (including information technology)” (44%), and “linguistics & language studies” (43%). These results demonstrate the great strides the University has made in research over the past few years. The thriving of the non-education disciplines is further reflected in the 60% increase in the number of high-quality outputs from 2016/17 to 2020/21. Our achievements in the 2020 RAE consolidate the University’s Education-plus approach.


• As of 30 June 2021, our researchers were engaged in 193 ongoing and newly approved projects, supported by HK$153.26 million from the RGC and other funding bodies. The projects represent a diversity of subject disciplines, including education, the humanities and arts, psychology and linguistics, social and behavioural sciences, and physical and health sciences. 2020/21 was a fruitful year for the University. We were awarded HK$28.82 million for 39 projects from the RGC. These projects include the Collaborative Research Fund (CRF), the Early Career Scheme (ECS), the General Research Fund (GRF), the Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship Scheme, and the Joint Research Schemes. It is noteworthy that our education discipline was ranked 1st in three consecutive years, winning the highest number and amount of GRF grant awards in the RGC Education Panel. In addition, our psychology and linguistic disciplines were ranked 1st and 2nd in winning ECS grant awards in 2019/20 and 2020/21 respectively. Other competitive grants awarded to our researchers in 2020/21 totalled $5.61 million. The major funding came from the Policy Innovation and Co-ordination Office (PICO), the Food and Health Bureau (FHB), the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), the Environmental Protection Department (EPD), the Lord Wilson Heritage Trust (LWHT), and the Narcotics Division, Security Bureau.

• Since 2019, the University has licensed six intellectual properties developed by our faculty members to outside companies. The innovative products or services are educational technology solutions, educational toys, healthcare technologies, and pedagogical innovations. Two licensees are start-ups supported by our University's Education and Social Entrepreneurs Fund (EASE Fund). It is noteworthy that the founders (two undergraduate students) of these start-ups translated the projects in which they were involved at EdUHK into business ventures shortly after graduation.


• A great deal of effort has been invested in expanding the EASE Fund, from $0.36 million supporting three start-ups in 2018/19 to $9.6 million supporting 12 start-ups in 2020/21. Besides, students / staff can access the three-year start-up incubation programme launched by the University to sharpen their entrepreneurial thinking and skills.

• In 2019-2021, EdUHK innovations harvested over 60 (17 in 2019, 22 in 2020 and 22 in 2021) international awards from the International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva, Silicon Valley International Invention Festival, International Invention Innovation Competition in Canada, International Trade Fair for Innovations in Germany, and International Innovation and Invention Competition in Taiwan. These include EdUHK’s first two gold medals by Dr Hung Keung of the Department of Cultural and Creative Arts (CCA) and Prof Woo Chi-Keung of the Department of Asian and Policy Studies (APS) in the Geneva Inventions competition, Organiser’s Choice Award, Best Invention Designs Award and Best 10 Women Inventors.


• The KT Sub-office has utilised internal and external resources to establish the funding infrastructure to support the KT initiatives in the University. In 2019-2021, the existing three funding schemes were refined while two new schemes were established. The total annual fund amount increased by six times from 2019 to 2021. On the innovation development side, the funding schemes supported 40 translational research and KT projects, and 12 patent applications. On the entrepreneurship side, 97 start-up teams were trained, with 20 of them funded. The start-up teams received 15 recognitions in terms of external awards and sizeable funding.

• The "3Es – Early Prevention, Early Identification, and Early Intervention: A School-Based Support Model of Social-Emotional Development for Kindergarten Children" (the 3Es Project) was funded with $26.33 million from the Simon K.Y. Lee Foundation for six years. Between Oct 2015 and Dec 2021, an estimated 13,000 children and their parents and teachers from over 180 kindergartens participated in the Project with over 800 kindergarten teachers and personnel having received the necessary training. The positive outcomes of this project led to the EDB of HKSAR’s commitment to launch a similar 3Es Project in local kindergartens.


• The Educational Innovation Leadership Project (EdILP) WeCan offered education support services for 4,200 teachers from 76 schools. Another EdILP Kindergarten-Primary Bridging Project 360 supported kindergarten students’ social and emotional development and independence during the pandemic, which benefited 150 schools, 10,000 parents, and 5,000 students.


• The University works closely with Microsoft Hong Kong to strengthen the AI elements of our BEd programmes, leads the territory wide CoolThink@JC programme, and pursues collaborative projects with local organisations to educate students and teachers in areas such as AI, coding, and digital creativity. Among them, the CoolThink@JC programme funded by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust (JC) has supported 131 primary schools, over 700 teachers and over 50,000 students in Hong Kong, and has won three international honours, namely QS Reimagine Education Awards (a Silver Award in the Engineering & IT category and a Bronze Award in the Presence Learning & Teaching category), International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) International Certification, as well as Education Alliance Finland Certification.


• Another large-scale project funded by JC is the CLAP for Youth@JC, commonly known as the “CLAP 2.0” project. The project began in September 2020 and aimed to foster an enabling environment for students and non-engaged youth in their critical transition from adolescent to adulthood.

• We continue to embrace the “Education-plus” vision to invest our efforts in developing education and humanities, social sciences, creative arts and culture, environmental studies, mathematics and statistics, and computer science.


• To build on our existing strengths, we are committed to (a) strengthening the role of research centres, particularly those at the university level, to be critical knowledge hubs; (b) building university-level central research facilities for staff and students’ research; (c) creating more spaces both within and outside the campus for research personnel and data collection; (d) facilitating faculty members to bid for large-scale external research grants, e.g., RGC’s Collaborative Research Fund, Theme-based Research Scheme, and Innovation and Technology Fund, etc., as well as national level / Mainland China grants; (e) establishing an affiliate research centre in the Greater Bay Area; (f) facilitating the establishment of deep collaborations with local, national, and international universities and research centres, including joint laboratories; and (g) encouraging the production of high-quality research outputs. Besides the strategic areas identified by the three faculties, social networks and analytics, environment health, life and career development across the life span, and educational models for students with special needs are the four strategic, multidisciplinary research areas for growth in the next few years.


• Innovation and entrepreneurship will be strengthened under the University's knowledge transfer initiative. The KT Sub-office under the Research and Development Office will play a technology partnership role in addition to its current administrative role. Technology partnership is meant to have the sub-office connect EdUHK’s researchers and entrepreneurs with the innovation and technology industries. The sub-office’s new role will better position the University to nurture research-based spin-offs and start-ups. In addition, the EdUHK Centre for Educational Entrepreneurship will be set up at the Hong Kong Science Park (HKSP). In parallel to the establishment of the Centre, a new programme, “Student Talent Development Programme for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (STDEI)” will be launched. This is a one-year non-credit bearing programme to equip EdUHK students with technological knowledge, soft skills, an entrepreneurship mindset, and, more importantly, first-hand experience in the innovation and technology ecosystem. Our target is to groom 90 EdUHK students as innovators / entrepreneurs.