Five HKU Science academics named as "Highly Cited Researchers 2018" amongst the world's top scientists

Professor Shah obtained his Bachelor degree from India, M.Sc. from USA and PhD from Canada. Before joining HKU as tenured Professor in January 2012, he worked as an Associate Lecturer, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor and Full Professor at Victoria University in Australia. His research interests are in probiotics, prebiotics, genomics and bioinformatics, and gut microbiome. He has published 289 research papers, 27 book chapters, and 213 conference abstracts. Additionally, he has edited 3 books on Dairy Products and Quality Control, Probiotic and Prebiotic and yogurt in health and disease prevention. He has also edited 2 special issues of the International Dairy Journal and 1 special issue of the British Journal of Nutrition. Prof Shah has received several prestigious international awards such as International Dairy Foods Association Research Award, American Dairy Science Association Distinguished Service Award, William C. Haines Dairy Science Award, and Marschall Rhodia International Dairy Science Award. He is a fellow of the Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology, American Dairy Science Association, and Institute of Food Technologists. Professor Shah has received 19,721 citations and his h-index is 72.

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Professor Sun received his BSc Degree from Peking University, China in 1982, and then received MSc and PhD degree from the University of British Columbia, Canada in 1985 and 1990. His expertise is to work on sophisticated geochemical instrument and to utilize chemical and isotope data to solve outstanding scientific problems in earth sciences. He joined HKU in 1994 and has been working on a large number of research projects on early history of the earth, geological evolution of North and South China cratons, accretionary history of Central Asia, and paleoclimate study using coral chemistry. He received a collaborative research award for Outstanding Young Researchers from the National Natural Science Foundation of China in 1999, an Outstanding Young Researcher Award from HKU in 2001, and a Natural Science Prize (Second Class) from China in 2014. He is the Hong Kong director of the Joint Chemical Geodynamics Laboratory with Chinese Academy of Science, and co-leader of International Geoscience Programme Project 592.

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Professor Zhao is a full-time professor at the Department of Earth Sciences. Professor Zhao’s main research fields are metamorphic petrology, Precambrian geology and supercontinents. His major research achievements are discoveries of two 1.95-1.85 billion years old continental collisional belts in North China, and recognition of global-scale 2.0-1.8 Ga collisional events leading to the assembly of a supercontinent. According to ISI Web of Knowledge, Professor Zhao’s record in the field of Geosciences includes 320 papers cited for more than 30,000 times (h-index = 98), ranking number 15 among 3,739 top 1% geoscientists. Professor Zhao has been received many awards, prizes and honors, incluidng State Natural Science Award (Second Class; First Awardee) (2014), Fellow of Geological Society of America (GSA) (2014), Highly Cited Researcher Award of Thomson Reuters (2014-2018), Outstanding Researcher Award of HKU (2016), 29th Khwarizmi International Award (First Class; 2016), Chair Professorship of Cheung Kong (Changjiang) Scholars Program (2017), Thousand Talents Plan (Short Term) (2017) and TWAS Prize in Earth, Astronomy and Space Sciences from The World Academy of Science (2018). Professor Zhao is the Editor-in-Chief of Precambrian Research, a leading international journal in earth sciences.

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Professor Yuan obtained his BSc and MPhil degrees from Nanjing University, China, in 1999 and 2001, respectively, and then PhD degree from City University of Hong Kong in 2004. He was a postdoc working at University of Victoria in Canada in 2005, and awarded a postdoc fellow by Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences in Canada in 2006. He had worked at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Hong Kong Baptist University before joining HKU in 2018 as a full professor. His research is focused on optimization, especially on numerical algorithms for large scale problems. Recently, he started working at the interface of optimization and data science domains, with particular emphasis on theoretical and algorithmic issues for various nonconvex optimization problems arising in these application areas.

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Professor Yao obtained his BSc from Peking University in 2001, and PhD in physics from University of California, San Diego in 2006. He joined HKU in September 2008, and is currently a full professor in the Department of Physics. His research interest lies in the physics of spin and valley in solids, with a current focus on two-dimensional materials and their heterostructures. He has played a decisive role in creating an important new research direction – valley optoelectronics in 2D materials, which aims to exploit valley, a quantum degree of freedom of electron, in future optoelectronic devices. Professor Yao has received the OCPA Achievement in Asia Award (Robert T. Poe Prize) in 2014 from The International Organization of Chinese Physicists and Astronomers (OCPA), the Croucher Innovation Award in 2013 from the Croucher Foundation, and the Outstanding Researcher Award 2014/15, Outstanding Young Researcher Award 2012/13 from HKU.

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