CityUHK Named Chairs, Academicians, and Highly Cited Researchers

City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) Fact Database · Module 04 Research This article catalogues CityUHK's honourific talent assets: academicians (elected to national academies of sciences or engineering around the world), Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study (HKIAS) Senior Fellows (Nobel, Fields, Wolf, and Shaw Prize laureates), named chair professors, and Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers (32 in 2025, as of the latest release). Every individual named below is cited for neutral, positive facts of academic honour, recorded by name; all are living and non‑controversial. For institutional platforms see institutes-and-labs.md; for a broader research overview see overview-achievements.md; individual scholarly narratives are in 06-people/faculty-and-leaders.md.

Leaf through the roster of Senior Fellows at CityUHK's Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study and you will find Nobel laureates in Chemistry and Physics listed side by side, along with winners of the Fields Medal and the Shaw Prize in Astronomy. The University does not have a century of accumulated prestige from which to “grow its own” luminaries, yet through a deliberate two‑pronged approach — named chairs plus senior fellowships — it has assembled a CV that few institutions of comparable vintage can match. What follows dissects that CV, annotating each entry against the official record.

# 1. Academicians (National Academies of Sciences and Engineering)

CityUHK maintains a dedicated “Notable Scholars / Academicians” page listing members of its faculty who hold fellowships in national academies worldwide. According to CityUHK “Academicians” page^※, the verifiable representative academicians include (many individuals belong to more than one academy):

In addition, the same page records that numerous CityUHK faculty are fellows or members of Academia Europaea, the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and academic bodies in Singapore, Australia, and elsewhere. For instance, in May 2026 a CityUHK scholar was elected an International Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering^※ (per a CityUHK press release).

# 2. HKIAS Senior Fellows: Nobel, Fields, Wolf, and Shaw Prize Laureates

The Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study (HKIAS) has recruited a number of world‑leading scientists as Senior Fellows — this is the cornerstone of CityUHK’s narrative of “flying the flag with top scholars.” According to the HKIAS Senior Fellows page^※, the Senior Fellows include the following major‑prize laureates (prize years are supplemented from publicly available authoritative sources):

Among them, Alain Aspect — when he was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, CityUHK issued a special congratulatory note honouring him as an HKIAS Senior Fellow^※ (per a CityUHK press release).

# 3. Named / Chair Professorships

CityUHK has established a number of named chair professorships, the majority of which are funded by donations or named in commemoration. One verifiable representative example:

• Herman Hu Chair Professor of Nanomaterials — held by Professor Zhang Hua of the Department of Chemistry (per CityUHK research‑story pages and HKIAS materials; for Zhang Hua’s scholarly trajectory in detail see 04-research/hua-zhang-2d-nanomaterials-phase.md).

# 4. Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers (2025: 32)

CityUHK’s most persuasive external metric of “talent density” is its count of Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) — researchers whose papers rank in the top 1% by citations in their respective fields.

According to a CityUHK press release (2025‑11‑12)^※, in 2025 CityUHK had 32 scholars selected, ranking second in Hong Kong and ninth in Asia^※, and the proportion of its faculty on the list was the highest in Hong Kong for the tenth consecutive year. That year, 6,888 researchers^※ from over 60 countries and territories were selected worldwide.

The press release specifically highlights scholars recognised in multiple disciplines (all clustered within materials, chemistry, and nanoscience), according to the CityUHK press release (2025‑11‑12)^※:

Looking at historical figures, CityUHK also had 32 scholars in 2024 and 28 in 2023, stabilising in recent years around 30 — a group heavily concentrated in the three pillars of Materials Science, Chemistry, and Engineering, mirroring the university’s disciplinary strengths (for year‑on‑year comparisons and scholar backgrounds see 06-people/faculty-and-leaders.md).