In late 2020, Hong Kong launched a five-year Global STEM Professorship Scheme backed by about HK$2 billion (US$255 million) from the authorities, universities and personal sources. According to Times Higher Education, the program goals to recruit round 100 main scientists.
Since then, universities in the metropolis have reported a gentle inflow of abroad lecturers. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology stated it has recruited greater than 100 top students and scientists from mainland China, the U.S., Germany, France, South Korea, Singapore and different nations since beginning a global hiring drive in October 2022. It plans to recruit one other 100.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong stated it has recruited greater than 150 main worldwide and promising younger students since 2023.
In this story, VnExpress International highlights 7 main researchers who’ve made the transfer in recent times.
Robotics and aerospace scholar Gao Yang
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Robotics and aerospace scholar Gao Yang. Photo courtesy of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology |
Professor Gao Yang, a robotics and aerospace knowledgeable, left King’s College London to join HKUST in May 2025 after two decades in the U.Ok.
She now leads the college’s Center for AI Robotics in Space Sustainability and its Space Science and Technology Institute and teaches at its division of mechanical and aerospace engineering.
Gao stated Hong Kong’s robust coverage assist and funding in analysis influenced her resolution. “Compared with the greater uncertainties in the U.K. and Europe, the situation in Hong Kong in terms of the volume and scale of support poured into research, innovation and commercialization looks a lot more positive, stable and sustainable,” the Straits Times quoted Gao as saying. “The investment in (my field of) aerospace programming definitely seems more determined and committed.”
She added she was “completely surprised and amazed by the proactive engagement from sectors including the decision-making think-tanks, businesses, the government and industry to build dialogue.”
Gao stated that if the uncertainty in Western analysis environments continues, it’s doubtless to have an effect on extra fields and lead to extra lecturers transferring to Asia.
Aerospace scientist Su Hui
Su, a former chief scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who lived in the U.S. for over 20 years, moved to Hong Kong in 2023 underneath the Global STEM Professorship Scheme.
She now serves as a professor in HKUST’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and chairperson of Hong Kong-based tech start-up Stellerus Technology Limited.
“After living in the U.S. for over 20 years, Hong Kong’s international environment made it easy for me to adapt, and I could also be closer to my family,” she stated.
She highlighted Hong Kong’s “free and open academic atmosphere” and its position as a bridge between China and global analysis. “The research environment here is connected with the West while backed by national development opportunities, providing an ideal place for scholars to realize innovation.”
Su additionally pointed to the metropolis’s robust college rankings and its place as a “super connector” linking mainland China with worldwide markets.
EV motor knowledgeable Zhu Ziqiang
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Zhu Ziqiang, a world-leading electrical motor engineering knowledgeable. Photo courtesy of Zhu’s LinkedIn |
Zhu, a number one electrical motor engineering knowledgeable, left the U.Ok. after 38 years to join Hong Kong Polytechnic University earlier this yr.
He beforehand spent his complete tutorial profession at the University of Sheffield, the place he constructed one among the world’s largest analysis groups in everlasting magnet motor techniques.
Zhu earned his bachelor’s and grasp’s levels in electrical engineering from Zhejiang University in the early Nineteen Eighties earlier than transferring to the U.Ok. in 1988 to pursue a doctorate at the University of Sheffield. He remained there as a analysis affiliate, senior analysis scientist and professor, and is at the moment listed as a visiting professor.
Widely regarded as a leading figure in electric motor engineering, Zhu is a fellow of a number of main skilled our bodies, together with the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering and the US-based Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
He obtained the IEEE Nikola Tesla Award in 2021 and the Global Energy Prize in 2024 for contributions to electrified transport, energy-efficient home equipment and lower-emission energy technology and utilization.
Astrophysicist Zhang Bing
Zhang, 57, a famend astrophysicist, left the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, U.S. to change into founding director of the Hong Kong Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Hong Kong in November 2025.
At the institute’s inauguration, Zhang stated it goals to place Hong Kong as a global heart for astrophysics analysis. “Hong Kong should become known not only for awarding top astrophysicists but also for pioneering cutting-edge research,” he stated.
He is broadly thought to be a number one knowledgeable on gamma-ray bursts, the most violent explosions in the universe. He is amongst the most cited researchers in his area, and his work was acknowledged in Science journal’s “Top 10 Breakthroughs of the Year” in each 2005 and 2020.
His honors embody the American Astronomical Society’s Bruno Rossi Prize, one among the highest awards in high-energy astrophysics, and election as a fellow of the American Physical Society.
Physicist Andre Geim
British physicist Andre Geim, who gained the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on graphene, will join the University of Hong Kong (HKU) as a chair professor this April after greater than two decades in the U.Ok, the college introduced just lately.
The physicist, broadly recognized for pioneering research on graphene, the world’s thinnest and strongest materials, stated the college’s collaborative analysis method influenced his resolution. “HKU’s forward-looking approach to interdisciplinary research and its commitment to supporting bold ideas creates the conditions in which great science happens,” he stated.
Born in Sochi, Russia, he earned his PhD in physics from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Chernogolovka earlier than conducting postdoctoral analysis in Britain and Denmark. In 1994 he secured a tenured place as an affiliate professor at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Geim joined the University of Manchester in 2001.
Geim and his collaborator Konstantin Novoselov had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for groundbreaking experiments on the two-dimensional materials graphene.
Over the course of his profession Geim has supervised dozens of Chinese graduate college students and has maintained shut ties with researchers in China. He turned a international member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2017.
Mathematician Ngo Bao Chau
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Vietnamese world-renowned mathematician Ngo Bao Chau. Photo courtesy of Hong Kong University |
World-leading mathematician Ngo Bao Chau will leave the University of Chicago after greater than a decade to join HKU in June, the college introduced in early February.
For Ngo, the resolution has been (*7*) He stated regardless that American universities have lengthy been revered establishments however latest insurance policies affecting international college students, particularly on visas, had change into troubling. “I would rather be in a place where I don’t have to deal with or to hear about things that I do not like,” the South China Morning Post quoted Ngo as saying.
Ngo additionally expressed his ambition to strengthen Asia’s scientific neighborhood, wanting “Asia to be the next America or the next Europe” the place science and arithmetic attempt. He added need Hong Kong to be “the connecting dot of Asian mathematics – China, India, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore and so on.”
He stated Hong Kong was nicely suited to that position and famous that it was additionally simple for students from Europe and the U.S. to attain. “Hong Kong has always been the place where the East meets West and it has tremendous opportunities to play that role.”
Ngo’s legacy is firmly cemented in the mathematical world. He is the solely Vietnamese scholar to win the Fields Medal, the self-discipline’s equal of the Nobel Prize, which he obtained in 2010 for his groundbreaking proof of the Fundamental Lemma of the Langlands Program.
Since 2010, he has been a member of the arithmetic college at the University of Chicago whereas additionally serving as scientific director of VIASM, contributing to the improvement of arithmetic in Vietnam.
Mathematician Vu Ha Van
The University of Hong Kong additionally recruited Vietnamese mathematician Vu Ha Van, who joined its arithmetic division in January after years at Yale University.
Vu has constructed a formidable fame by fixing complicated mathematical puzzles that had stumped researchers for decades. His groundbreaking work consists of unlocking quantity principle’s Erdős–Folkman downside and random graph principle’s Shamir conjecture.
In a landmark partnership with 2006 Fields Medalist Terence Tao, he proved the round regulation conjecture and the four-moment theorem. Together, these proofs stand as important, historic breakthroughs in random matrix principle.
The global mathematical neighborhood has closely acknowledged his contributions over the years. His honors embody the 2008 George Pólya Prize from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, in addition to the 2012 Delbert Ray Fulkerson Prize, awarded collectively by the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Optimization Society.