Young researchers at the University of Hong Kong have achieved outstanding results in the Excellent Young Scientists Fund (Hong Kong and Macau) for 2020.

Seven HKU young scientists have been awarded the prestigious fund under the National Natural Science Foundation of China, an organisation managed by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST).

This has been the second consecutive year for HKU to be awarded the highest number of projects among its peer institutions, after the fund was extended to Hong Kong and Macau for applications by eight designated universities since 2019.

The Excellent Young Scientists Fund is granted annually to support young male scientists under age 38 and young female scientists under age 40 who have attained outstanding achievements in research, to further expand in areas of their own choice.

It is highly competitive, with only 25 projects in total funded across Hong Kong and Macau this year. Each project will receive funding of RMB1.2 million over a maximum period of three years, in the form of cross-border remittance to directly support the researchers' work in Hong Kong or Macau.

Congratulations to Dr Lydia Cheung and Dr Alan Wong from our school who have been awarded the China's Excellent Young Scientists Fund 2020 and their award winning projects are:

Dr Lydia Cheung Wai Ting
Assistant Professor, School of Biomedical Sciences, LKS Faculty of Medicine
Project Title: Precision medicine strategies for ovarian cancer
Dr Cheung is committed to in-depth studies of identifying and characterising novel driver gene mutations in ovarian cancer, especially the associated alterations in signaling pathways and drug responses. The project will address two key scientific challenges that impede the development and effectiveness of precision cancer medicine: one is to reveal novel genome-informed therapeutic approaches and predictive markers; and the other is to derive strategies to overcome cancer drug resistance.​

Dr Alan Wong Siu Lun
Assistant Professor, School of Biomedical Sciences, LKS Faculty of Medicine (joint appointment with Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering)
Project Title: Synthetic biology and combinatorial genetics technologies
Innovative tools that accelerate direct measurement of the combined effect of genetic perturbations should revolutionise our way to study and engineer the intricate biological systems in a systematic way, and facilitate the development of next-generation therapeutics. The research aims to develop and apply multiplexed genetic technologies to decode complex diseases and devise effective combination-based therapeutic strategies against cancers and neurodegenerative diseases, as well as to engineer new gene editing tools.