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The following is issued on behalf of University Grants Committee Secretariat:
The University Grants Committee (UGC) today (September 4) announced the funding results of the fourth round of its Areas of Excellence (AoE) scheme.
On the advice of its Areas of Excellence Specialist Group (AoESG), the committee decided to fund two proposals for a total amount of $105.92 million over a period of eight years. The budget is set out in Annex 1, and the abstracts of the two proposals are attached at Annex 2.
Announcing the results, Chairman of the University Grants Committee Mrs Laura Cha May Lung said the AoE Scheme was very worthwhile. "The scheme helps foster stronger institutional collaboration and provides a platform to bring together consortia of researchers to innovate and contribute their strengths towards international excellence. Its relatively sizeable funding enables large research teams to pursue longer-term and high impact projects," she said.
"I am very pleased to see that institutions have put tremendous efforts into preparing the AoE proposals and offered whole-hearted support to their research teams, as shown by the high quality of the proposals submitted, and their readiness to commit matching funding throughout the project duration," Mrs Cha said.
Commenting on the quality of the proposals in the fourth round, Chairman of the AoESG Professor Sir Colin Lucas said the quality of all the proposals was very high. "Since the AoE Scheme is highly selective, it has to apply very stringent standards in the evaluation. The two selected projects are clearly top-notch and their research teams are recognised as international leaders in the relevant fields."
"We believe that these two projects will benefit the social, economic and academic development of Hong Kong in the long run, and reinforce Hong Kong's relative strength in the respective research areas," Professor Lucas said.
The UGC received 37 initial proposals from seven UGC-funded institutions in the fourth round in December, 2006, covering a wide spectrum of research subjects in biology and medicine, physical sciences, engineering, humanities, social sciences and business studies. Evaluation was undertaken by review panel composed of predominantly overseas experts from the related fields.
The progress of all AoE funded projects is subject to rigorous monitoring, and release of funding is dependent on achievement of deliverables at different stages. In addition to scrutiny of progress reports, the University Grants Committee also conducts on-site review visits to the projects as part of its monitoring and assessment effort.
The background information of the AoE Scheme is set out in Annex 3.
Ends/Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Issued at HKT 15:10
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