11 Jan 2026

Scientists Awarded NSFC/RGC Joint Funding 2025/26 for Three Research Initiatives

From the left: Professors Jian HE, Jenny Hiu Ching LEE and Jin WU

Three distinguished scientists from the Faculty of Science have been awarded funding for their research projects under the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and the Research Grants Council (RGC) Joint Research Schemes for 2025/26.

This year, a total of 13 academics from HKU have been honoured with this prestigious funding, with three of the successful initiatives originating from the Faculty of Science. These projects span the disciplines of Chemistry, Biological Sciences, and Physics, reflecting the Faculty's diverse research strengths and its commitment to tackling fundamental scientific questions through cross-border collaboration.

The three awarded Principal Investigators (PIs) and their projects are:

Project: Developing Copper Catalytic Materials for Asymmetric Radical Couplings

Professor Jian HE, Department of Chemistry

Professor Jian He received his BS degree in chemistry from Zhejiang University in 2011 and PhD degree from The Scripps Research Institute in 2017. He subsequently undertook postdoctoral training at the California Institute of Technology before joining the Department of Chemistry at The University of Hong Kong in 2019. His research interests are at the interface of organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, and materials science, with a particular emphasis on the development of heterogeneous transition-metal catalysis.

In recent years, Professor He and his team have established strengths in the design and synthesis of novel framework- and nanocluster-based catalysts for the advancement of sustainable organic synthesis and energy conversion. The team has extensively studied the catalytic properties of transition-metal species embedded in framework supports and positioned on nanocluster surfaces to facilitate key elementary steps in electron-transfer- and energy-transfer-mediated processes. The group’s newly developed heterogeneous catalysts not only offer superior reactivity and recyclability to their homogeneous counterparts, but also enable hitherto unavailable reaction types, paving the way for practical applications in large-scale and diversified chemical production.

Professor He has published his independent work in high-profile international journals, including Nature Catalysis, Nature Communications, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemie, ACS Central Science, JACS Au, Chemical Engineering Journal, Small, etc. He is the recipient of the prestigious Croucher Innovation Award (Croucher Foundation, 2021), the National Excellent Young Scientists Fund (NSFC, 2024), Asian Core Program Lectureship Awards, and HKU Outstanding Young Researcher Award.

Project: Precision Mass Measurements of Neutron-Rich Heavy Nuclei on the r-Process Nucleosynthesis Path at HIAF Facility

Professor Jenny Hiu Ching LEE, Department of Physics

Professor Jenny Lee is an accomplished nuclear physics experimentalist dedicated to exploring the novel structures of extremely exotic nuclei. Leveraging the capabilities of two of the world’s most advanced radioactive isotope beam facilities—HIAF in China and RIKEN in Japan—her research group has discovered new nuclear magic numbers, revealing the underlying nature of alpha clustering and nucleon correlations, and performing highprecision mass measurements vital to understanding nucleosynthesis.

In parallel with these scientific advances, Professor Lee’s team has made strides in experimental instrumentation. They have successfully developed a largecoverage silicon detection array integrated with frontend ASIC readout electronics, constructed a stateoftheart multireflection timeofflight spectrometer (MRTOF), and carried out a major upgrade of the DALI2 gammaray detection array, attaining worldleading resolution and efficiency. Collectively, these innovations have ushered in a new highprecision era in nuclear structure and mass spectroscopy, enabling deeper insights into the fundamental properties of atomic nuclei.

Project: The Influence of Different Mycorrhizal Types on Forest Ecosystem Structure and Function: A Multi-Scale Study from Molecules to Ecosystems

Professor Jin WU, School of Biological Sciences

Professor Jin Wu is a broadly trained ecologist whose expertise spans ecosystem ecology, biodiversity and conservation, climate change, and sustainability science. He is committed to advancing understanding in these fields through multidisciplinary approaches—including field research, remote sensing, and ecosystem modeling—across scales ranging from individual organisms to entire ecosystems and regions.

By 2025, Professor Wu has published 154 scientific papers amassing 9,156 citations on Google Scholar and attaining an Hindex of 51. His research portfolio include includes a Science cover story as first author and 12 co‑authored papers in prestigious journals such as Nature, Nature Geoscience, Nature Plants, Nature Ecology & Evolution, Nature Climate Change, Nature Communications, Science Advances, and PNAS.

Professor Wu currently serves as Assistant Reviews Editor for Global Change Biology and Associate Editor for Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation. Since 2024, he has been listed among the world’s top 2% scientists by Stanford University and was the recipient of the NSFC Excellent Young Scientist Award in 2019.

About the NSFC/RGC Joint Research Scheme

The NSFC/RGC Joint Research Scheme aims to promote collaboration between researchers in Hong Kong and the Mainland on the basis of complementing each other's strengths. It supports research projects across a broad range of disciplines that are of interest to both the RGC and the NSFC.

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