HKU Research Output Overview: RAE, RGC Funding, Nature Index and Citation Performance

The University of Hong Kong (HKU) comprehensive information database · Module 04: Research This article quantifies HKU's overall research performance: results from the UGC-funded Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), outcomes of competitive funding from the Research Grants Council (RGC), the Nature Index and its disciplinary breakdown, and citation/highly-cited performance. Figures are time-sensitive and vary by methodology; the source and year are noted in each case.

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# 1. Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2020)

# 1.1 What is the RAE?

The RAE is the University Grants Committee (UGC)'s periodic assessment of research quality across UGC-funded universities in Hong Kong. It uses a four-star scale: 4 stars = world-leading, 3 stars = internationally excellent, and lower tiers. The most recent round was RAE 2020, released on 24 May 2021 per the UGC press release^※, covering research completed between October 2013 and September 2019.

# 1.2 Territory-wide results (baseline for comparison)

According to the UGC press release^※, RAE 2020 involved 8 UGC-funded universities, assessing some 16,000 research outputs (from around 4,200 eligible academic staff), 340 research impact case studies and 190 research environment statements. Territory-wide, roughly 70% of research was rated "internationally excellent" or above, of which 25% was "world-leading (4 stars)" and 45% "internationally excellent (3 stars)". These territory-wide figures serve as the baseline against which individual universities' performance is measured.

# 1.3 HKU's performance

HKU achieved leading results across several Units of Assessment (UoAs) in RAE 2020, according to the HKU RAE results page^※ and faculty announcements:

• Faculty of Science: per the Faculty of Science announcement^※, the Faculty recorded the highest proportion of 4-star ratings in UoAs including Chemistry, Earth Sciences and other Physical Sciences, and Mathematics and Statistics; roughly 37% of all submitted research was rated world-leading (4 stars). Its Mathematics and Statistics unit had the highest 4-star proportion in Hong Kong among comparable units.
• Faculty of Law: per multiple announcements, HKU Law achieved the highest 4-star scores across all categories in the RAE 2020 Law panel.
• Mechanical Engineering: the relevant UoA recorded the highest proportion of world-leading (4-star) ratings among UGC-funded universities.
• Faculty of Education: achieved a 100% 4-star rating in the "research environment" sub-profile.

Note: The territory-wide breakdown of overall 4-star/3-star percentages across universities involves many methodological details. This archive records only the unit-level results explicitly stated in official/faculty announcements, and does not compute its own "overall university scores."

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# 2. RGC Competitive Funding

# 2.1 2025/26: HKU leads

According to the HKU press release "HKU leads in RGC's research funding exercise for 2025/26"^※ (17 August 2025), HKU led local institutions in the 2025/26 RGC funding round:

# 2.2 Other RGC schemes

Per the HKU press release^※, HKU also continues to receive funding under schemes such as the RGC Collaborative Research Fund — for example, the release records 12 HKU research projects receiving HK$72M. Funding under large-scale schemes such as the Theme-based Research Scheme (TRS) is covered in institutes-and-labs.md §6.

# 2.3 Theme-based Research Scheme (TRS)

The Theme-based Research Scheme (TRS) is a large-scale, multi-year flagship RGC funding stream focused on four strategic themes: promoting good health; sustaining the environment; strengthening Hong Kong's strategic position as a regional and international business centre; and promoting emerging research and innovation important to Hong Kong. According to the HKU Research Services "TRS 6th Round" page^※ and the HKU press release^※, in the 2022/23 exercise (Round 12), 5 HKU projects received a total of HK$168M (comprising HK$149M in RGC funding and HK$19M in university matching funds), covering all four themes. Examples include "ReRACE: ReRAM AI Chips on the Edge" (Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering) and "Towards Carbon Neutrality: Catalysing Water and CO₂ to Green Resource Carriers" (Department of Chemistry; awarded approximately HK$43.01M). Per the HKU Research Services page^※, across all completed TRS rounds, projects coordinated by HKU account for a substantial share of funded projects — the page notes 27 of 60 funded projects — leading local institutions.

# 2.4 Areas of Excellence (AoE)

The Areas of Excellence (AoE) scheme, launched by the UGC in 1998, supports UGC-funded universities in developing existing strengths into "areas of excellence". According to the HKU AoE page^※ and the Faculty of Science report^※, HKU has led or participated in multiple AoE projects over successive rounds, including the Molecular Functional Materials Area of Excellence (coordinated by Professor Vivian W.W. Yam of the Department of Chemistry), as well as projects in physics-oriented areas such as 2D materials and metamaterials (the 2D materials project, per the Faculty of Science report, received over HK$80M in funding). Together with State Key Laboratories and InnoHK centres, AoE constitutes one of the two wheels of HKU's research ecosystem — "competitive funding + platform development" (for platforms, see institutes-and-labs.md).

# 2.5 NSFC–RGC Joint Research Scheme

Beyond Hong Kong's own GRF/ECS/TRS/AoE schemes, HKU academics also perform consistently well under the joint research fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and the RGC. According to the HKU press release "HKU 35 young scientists receive funding from China's NSFC, the highest among local universities"^※, in the 2024 assessment round 35 HKU early-career scholars received NSFC funding — the largest number among Hong Kong's eight UGC-funded institutions. Of these, 7 were selected under the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, 7 under the Excellent Young Scientists Fund, and 21 under the Young Scientists Fund, spanning economics and management, engineering, medicine and science. This channel runs in parallel with local competitive funding such as GRF/ECS, reflecting HKU academics' competitiveness within both the mainland and Hong Kong funding systems. Project-level lists are published annually by the UGC on the "NSFC-RGC Joint Research Scheme" page^※; this archive does not catalogue individual projects, only the overall picture.

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# 3. Nature Index

# 3.1 HKU's overall output

The Nature Index tracks article output in a set of around 145 high-quality natural-science and health-science journals, providing an absolute Count and a fractional Share (attributed by author contribution). According to the Nature Index institutional profile for HKU^※, over the October 2024–September 2025 interval, HKU's overall output was approximately Count 1,140, Share 231.42.

# 3.2 Disciplinary breakdown

Per the same Nature Index profile, HKU's output by discipline (Share) is approximately:

Leading research topics include Clinical Sciences and Macromolecular and Materials Chemistry.

# 3.3 Relationship to QS's "Citations per Faculty" indicator

Beyond the Nature Index, another frequently cited measure of citation intensity is the "Citations per Faculty" component of the QS World University Rankings — it divides the total citations received over six years by papers published in the preceding five years, by the number of faculty, to normalise for institutional size. According to the HKU press release "QS World University Rankings 2027"^※, in the QS 2027 edition HKU's score on this indicator ranked second globally (behind Harvard University) and first in Asia and Hong Kong, retaining the top spot in Asia/Hong Kong for the second consecutive year — meaning that alongside its overall rank (11th), the density of its research impact is the single biggest component driving its standing. This indicator and the Nature Index cover different journal universes (QS draws on the full Scopus database and is not limited to the natural sciences), so the two should be read separately and not directly converted; full methodology and historical trends for the QS/THE/ARWU composite rankings are covered in ../03-rankings/qs-usnews-2027-deep.md and ../03-rankings/ranking-methodology-and-critiques.md.

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# 4. Citation Performance and Highly Cited Researchers

# 4.1 Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers 2025: a record 54

Highly Cited Researchers is an annual list compiled by academic data provider Clarivate from the Web of Science citation database, selecting researchers whose papers rank among the top approximately 1% globally by citations within their field or across fields. According to the HKU press release "HKU Achieves Record with 54 Academics Named Clarivate's Highly Cited Researchers 2025"^※, in the 2025 list 54 HKU academics were named — a record for the University — placing HKU 13th globally by number of affiliated researchers. Hong Kong as a whole ranked 8th globally by headcount; HKU alone accounted for 38% of all Hong Kong entries, the highest share among local institutions. Globally, the 2025 list included 60 countries/territories and 6,868 entries. HKU's honourees by discipline:

"Cross-Field" is a category Clarivate introduced in 2019 to capture researchers whose citation performance spans multiple disciplines without meeting the threshold in any single one. It frequently tops the disciplinary counts and reflects breadth of influence rather than depth within a single field.

# 4.2 Other citation measures

Beyond the Clarivate lists, HKU academics also feature regularly in researcher rankings from organisations such as Research.com (per the HKU researcher blog^※), and the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) places HKU among the world's leading institutions in its research performance sub-ranking (per the CWUR HKU profile^※).

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# 5. State Science and Technology Awards: HKU academics' record

The State Science and Technology Awards are the highest-level honours for individuals and teams in science and technology in mainland China. They comprise the State Natural Science Award, State Technological Invention Award and State Scientific and Technological Progress Award, each with first and second classes (historically also third, fourth and special classes). HKU academics, as a major force within Hong Kong scholarship, have won awards consistently over the years. Per the HKU Research Services "State Science and Technology Awards Recipients" page^※ (which notes that "the titles and departments listed below are those held at the time of the award"), recent awards to HKU academics include:

State Natural Science Award

State Scientific and Technological Progress Award

The "Special" class awarded in 2017 to the Public Health/Microbiology team is the highest honour tier in this system; per the same page it relates to a team achievement in infectious disease prevention and control. The Microbiology Department's accumulated research in emerging infectious diseases is covered in signature-virology-infection.md. The medical field's successive State Natural Science and Scientific and Technological Progress Awards over many years corroborate HKU's long-term strengths in liver disease and cancer research — see liver-transplant-breakthroughs.md.

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# 6. Croucher Foundation Fellowships and Individual Research Honours

Beyond institution-level funding and rankings, HKU academics also earn recognition through major individual research awards.

The Croucher Senior Research Fellowship is awarded by Hong Kong's Croucher Foundation. According to the HKU press release "Croucher Foundation presents Senior Research Fellowships 2025 to three distinguished scholars"^※, only about 3 fellowships are awarded territory-wide each year, selected through paper screening, international peer review and multiple rounds of Council deliberation, each worth approximately HK$3M (including teaching relief costs). Among the 2025 awardees, Professor Xiaoming Yuan of HKU's Department of Mathematics was one of the three; his research focuses on large-scale optimisation problems in AI and cloud computing. Because of its stringent selection process and territory-wide competition, the Croucher Fellowship is regarded as a significant indicator of individual research distinction in Hong Kong academia.

HKU also maintains an Endowed Professorships system, which honours distinguished scholars in-house with chairs named after donors — over 120 such chairs have been established; see named-centres-and-honours.md. Individual honours, together with institution-level State Key Laboratories and InnoHK platforms (see institutes-and-labs.md), make up HKU's "talent + platform" research ecosystem.

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# 7. Summary and Gaps

• Well-sourced: RAE 2020 territory-wide and HKU unit-level results (UGC/HKU official); RGC 2025/26 funding and NSFC joint funding (HKU official, including GRF/ECS/TRS/AoE figures); Nature Index output and disciplinary breakdown for HKU (Nature official data); Clarivate 2025 Highly Cited Researchers — 54 individuals and disciplinary distribution (HKU official press release citing Clarivate data); QS 2027 Citations per Faculty — 2nd globally (HKU official press release); State Science and Technology Awards — departmental and class records by year; Croucher Senior Research Fellowship 2025 awardee (all from official HKU pages).
• Methodological cautions: No self-computed "overall university percentage" for RAE; RGC/NSFC figures limited to the years officially published; Nature Index's disciplinary coverage is limited; highly-cited lists vary in methodology and non-Clarivate sources are treated only in general terms; State Science and Technology Award recipient names are transcribed in the abbreviated format of the official page, without further verification.
• Not found / deferred: HKU's total annual research expenditure/revenue has no single authoritative consolidated figure — public sources are dispersed (government grants + competitive funding + donations + contract research) and this archive has not obtained a single official aggregate, marked not found (for the financial overview, see ../08-finances/finances.md); specific spin-off companies and technology-transfer output are covered in output-and-startups.md.

# Related Reading

• institutes-and-labs.md — research platform architecture: State Key Laboratories, InnoHK centres and more
• named-centres-and-honours.md — endowed professorships, named research centres and the honours system
• output-and-startups.md — spin-off companies and technology-transfer output
• liver-transplant-breakthroughs.md — landmark research achievements in liver disease and transplantation
• signature-virology-infection.md — emerging infectious disease and virology research
• ../03-rankings/qs-usnews-2027-deep.md — in-depth analysis of the QS/US News 2027 composite rankings
• ../08-finances/finances.md — HKU financial overview

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