CityUHK Academic Leaders, Academicians, Highly Cited Researchers and Past Presidents

This article profiles the distinguished academic staff of City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) — past and present — through the scholarly identities of successive Presidents, master chair professors across faculties, and the community of scholars who, led by materials science, have been named "Highly Cited Researchers" for years on end. The focus here is strictly on the scholars' academic contributions and standing (academy memberships, original work, international honours); the politics of presidential leadership, contract-renewal disputes and the like belong to the wild-history module and are not covered here. For notable alumni see ./notable-alumni.md; for fuller biographies of key figures see ./profiles.md; for a quick reference on academicians and awards see ./academicians-and-awards.md; for the founding presidency and the early leadership lineage see ./first-vice-chancellor-david-johns.md; for a biography of the fourth President see ./fourth-president-reliability-scholar.md.

A note on convention: CityU's current and recent leadership (the Acting President, the just-resigned former President, the Council Chairman) are referred to by office in the governance/wild-history modules, per the site's house rules. This article sits in the neutral-facts zone, so retired historical Presidents (Donald Bushell, Cheng Yiu-chung, Chang Hsin-kang, Way Kuo) are named outright, and only their academic achievements — a neutral, positive facet — are recorded.

CityU began life in 1984 as the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong, and was re-titled a university in 1994. As a young institution with barely four decades of history^※, CityU lacks the humanistic "national-learning" accumulation of century-old universities; instead it has leapfrogged ahead in science, engineering and applied disciplines — above all materials science, electronic engineering, energy and data science — and, on the strength of a "recruit world-class scholars + establish named chairs + produce highly cited output" formula, has broken into the global top 100 in several rankings. This article proceeds in three layers: the academic identities of successive Presidents, outstanding chair professors across faculties, and the Highly Cited Researchers community.

# 1. The Academic Identities of Successive Presidents

The CityU presidency has never been purely administrative; every incumbent has also been a representative scholar in their own discipline. The table below records their fields of scholarship, not their records in office (governance controversies are covered in the wild-history module and are not addressed here). The current Acting President and the former President who has just stepped down are referred to by office, per the house rules, and are not named in this table; retired historical Presidents are named as a matter of record.

Note: the fifth President (in office 2023–2026, resigned 24 April 2026) and the current Acting President are recent sensitive figures and are referred to by office in accordance with this site's conventions; their academic backgrounds and tenures are covered under the corresponding office-holder entries in the governance/wild-history module. Cheng Yiu-chung subsequently became President of the University of Hong Kong; the controversies of his term there belong to HKU's affairs, not this University's, and are not discussed in this article. For the founding President David Johns and the institution-building years, see ./first-vice-chancellor-david-johns.md.

# Chang Hsin-kang (biomedical engineering)

# Way Kuo (reliability engineering)

# 2. Outstanding Chair Professors Across Faculties

CityU recruits world-class scholars through two tiers — Chair Professor and Named Chair Professor. The named chair is both a tool for attracting star academics and the University's highest honour for its own outstanding scholars (on the endowment and machinery of named chairs see 06-people/alumni-network-and-advancement.md). Representative scholars are listed below by discipline; the full roster of academy memberships is at ./academicians-and-awards.md.

# Materials Science and Chemistry

CityU's materials science is one of its strongest fields (around 39th globally in the QS 2026 subject ranking, around 5th in U.S. News, around 19th in ARWU). It is also the discipline that produces the densest cluster of Highly Cited Researchers.

# Electronic Engineering and Systems Science

# Mathematics, Data Science and the Humanities

# 3. The Highly Cited Researchers Community (2025: 32 scholars)

One quantitative footnote to CityU's academic reputation is its sustained showing on Clarivate's "Highly Cited Researchers (HCR)" list.

• In 2025, 32 CityU scholars were named Highly Cited Researchers^※ — second in Hong Kong, ninth in Asia in absolute numbers; first in Hong Kong for the tenth consecutive year when measured as a proportion of the University's total faculty.
• That year 6,868 scholars worldwide^※ were named (from around 60 countries/regions). CityU had 4 scholars listed in more than one subject field; of these, Professor Lou Xiongwen was listed in three subject fields simultaneously — an achievement reached by only a handful of scholars worldwide^※.
• Officially named representative scholars include: Zaiping Guo (Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering), Xiongwen David Lou (Chair Professor of Chemistry; listed in three fields), Hua Zhang (Chair Professor of Nanomaterials/Chemistry) and Qichun Zhang (Materials Science and Chemistry)^※.

For comparison: CityU also had 32 in 2024 and 28 in 2023 (according to the official 2023 announcement^※) — a steady level of around 30 in recent years. The Highly Cited Researchers are heavily concentrated in materials science, chemistry and engineering, matching CityU's disciplinary strengths. For the complete roster of academicians, year-by-year Highly Cited counts and major award winners, see ./academicians-and-awards.md.

This community sketch reveals the main thread of CityU's academic development: with materials science as the flagship, and with Highly Cited Researchers and named chairs as the levers, the University has built international visibility within a short institutional history. Its leading figures are overwhelmingly mid-career and senior scholars recruited from overseas in the last decade or so (Zhang Hua, Lou Xiongwen and Guo Zaiping, for instance, all came to CityU from elsewhere), rather than home-grown "lifelong CityU people" who rose through the ranks — a marked contrast with the "alumni–faculty–president" revolving door of long-established comprehensive universities, and the typical path of a late-developing research university.