Named Professorships, Academicians and Highly Cited Researchers at CityUHK

The City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) Comprehensive Information Database · 04 Research Module This article surveys the University's talent honours portfolio: academicians (of national academies of sciences/engineering), HKIAS Senior Fellows (Nobel/Fields/Wolf/Shaw laureates), named chair professorships, and Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers (32 in 2025). The individuals named below are all neutral, positive facts of academic distinction, recorded by name as stated; all are living and uncontroversial. For institutional platforms see institutes-and-labs.md; for the research overview see overview-achievements.md; for individual scholars' academic contributions, see 06-people/faculty-and-leaders.md.

Scroll through the list of Senior Fellows at CityU's Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study (HKIAS) and you will find Nobel laureates in chemistry and physics side by side with winners of the Fields Medal and the Shaw Prize in Astronomy. The University does not have a century of accumulated prestige to "grow" such figures itself; instead, it has recruited them through the combined inducement of named chair professorships and the HKIAS Senior Fellowship, writing into its own CV a roster that younger peer institutions can hardly match. This article unpacks that CV, item by item, and annotates the official designations.

# I. Academicians (national academies of sciences/engineering)

CityU maintains a dedicated "Notable Scholars / Academicians^※" page listing the members of national academies among its faculty. According to that page, verifiable representative academicians include (one person often holding multiple academy memberships):

The same page also indicates that a number of CityU faculty hold fellowships of the Academia Europaea, the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and academies in Singapore, Australia and elsewhere — e.g. in May 2026 a CityU scholar was elected International Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering^※ (per a CityU press release).

# II. HKIAS Senior Fellows: Nobel, Fields, Wolf and Shaw laureates

The Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study (HKIAS) has recruited a number of the world's leading scientists as Senior Fellows — the core of CityU's "top scholars as banner" narrative. According to the HKIAS "Vision and Mission" page^※, the Institute positions itself as bringing together "some of the most brilliant scientific minds to undertake curiosity-driven research and thinking," covering mathematics, the natural sciences, materials science, life sciences and other fields of basic and applied research. Senior Fellows are chosen from internationally recognised leaders across disciplines; beyond their own research, they also mentor young scholars and students through activities such as the HKIAS Distinguished Lecture series.

Among the Senior Fellows are the following laureates of distinction (award years annotated from publicly available authoritative sources):

When Alain Aspect won the Nobel Prize in 2022, CityU issued a dedicated congratulatory message noting his honour as an HKIAS Senior Fellow^※ (per a CityU press release).

The list is by no means limited to Nobel and Fields laureates. According to the official HKIAS Senior Fellows page^※ (as seen in July 2026), current Senior Fellows now number more than thirty, with a separate category of Former Senior Fellows. The list is arranged alphabetically and spans mathematics, physics, materials, neuroscience, public health, statistics and more. A selection follows (excluding those already listed in the previous table):

Other current and former Senior Fellows (e.g. Habib Ammari, Dame Madeleine Atkins, Mau-Chung Frank Chang, David R. Clarke, Marc Fontecave, Herbert Gleiter, Tomas Hökfelt, Evelyn Hu, Tobin J. Marks, Jean Salençon, among others) are national academy members or international learned-society fellows in their respective disciplines. For the full list and biographies, consult the official HKIAS page^※ as currently posted.

# III. Named / Chair Professorships

CityU runs a Named Chair Professorship Scheme — which the official page calls "one of the highest honours the University can bestow on a scholar"^※ — serving a dual function of academic recognition and fundraising: it both attracts and retains world-class scholars, and allows donors to enter the upper echelons of the CityU Foundation and the University's permanent donor rolls through "perpetual naming." The scheme has two tiers — the higher "Named Chair Professorship" and the lower "Named Professorship" — and holders must use their named title formally on all official occasions.

According to the official directory of the Named Chair Professorship Scheme^※ (as seen in July 2026, arranged alphabetically by title), the established Named Chair Professorships include:

The same directory also lists Named Professorships (the lower tier), e.g. the Chan Hon Bun Professor of Behavioural and Policy Sciences, the Hu Chenny Professor of Biomedical Science, the Lee Shau Kee Professor of e-Learning, the Wu Hon Sun Professor of Architecture, the Shun Hing Education and Charity Fund Professor of Energy and Environment, and the Wong Chun Hong Professor of Data Engineering.

The concentration of donors is worth noting: one donor, Yeung Kin Man, alone has 5 chair professorships in his name (biomedical science, finance, network science, photonic materials, sustainable engineering), while Lee Shau Kee accounts for 2 chair professorships plus 1 professorship — reflecting a fundraising strategy that leans heavily on a small number of large donors via "concentrated recruitment" rather than a broad scatter of small-scale named posts.

# IV. Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers (32 in 2025)

The most persuasive "talent density" metric CityU presents externally is the Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list — which selects researchers whose citations place them in the top 1% globally within their fields.

According to a CityU press release (2025-11-12)^※, 32 CityU scholars were named HCRs in 2025, ranking second in Hong Kong and ninth in Asia^※, with the proportion of listed faculty having ranked first in Hong Kong for ten consecutive years. Globally, 6,868 scholars^※ from 60 countries and regions were named that year.

The press release singled out representative scholars listed across multiple disciplines (all clustered in materials/chemistry/nanotechnology). Per the 2025-11-12 press release^※:

# The four-year trajectory, 2022–2025: from "29 scholars, 50th globally" to "32 scholars, 29th globally"

The HCR list is published annually, and CityU's press releases track it year by year, tracing a clear upward curve:

Placing the four years side by side reveals two threads: the absolute number named has fluctuated narrowly between 28 and 32, but the global rank has climbed steadily from 50th to 29th — the result of a growing denominator (the total pool of named researchers worldwide, 6,938 in 2022 and 6,868 in 2025) interacting with CityU's own gains. Meanwhile "first in Hong Kong by proportion of faculty" has held for ten consecutive years (per the 2025 press release headline) — the metric CityU cites most externally, because it strips out the scale advantage of bigger institutions.

The 2024 press release also disclosed another figure often overlooked: nearly 210^※ CityU scholars were named to the "World's Top 2% Most-cited Scientists" list — a broader ranking compiled by a Stanford University team with a wider definition than Clarivate's HCR. The media often conflate the two; readers should note the distinction: HCR is the narrow criterion of "top 1% in a discipline, re-selected annually," while "Top 2%" is a wider career/annual citation-impact ranking.

These scholars are heavily concentrated in materials science, chemistry and engineering — consistent with CityU's disciplinary strengths (for year-by-year comparisons and scholar backgrounds, see 06-people/faculty-and-leaders.md; for a quick reference on academicians and awards, see 06-people/academicians-and-awards.md).