Lingnan University in Hong Kong achieves record funding and number of successful projects in the 2025/26 RGC funding exercise

Lingnan University has delivered its best-ever performance in the latest 2025/26 funding exercise carried out by the Research Grants Council (RGC), covering the General Research Fund (GRF), Early Career Scheme (ECS), and Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship Scheme (HSSPFS). Forty-nineLingnan research projects have been supported, a 26 per cent increase from last year’s 39 projects, and the total subsidy has risen by 22 per cent to nearly HKD$30 million, an unprecedented achievement in both the number of grants awarded and total funding.

Prof S. Joe Qin, President and Wai Kee Kau Chair Professor of Data Science of Lingnan University, said “We are greatly encouraged by this year’s funding results. Of the projects, ten are related to data science, interdisciplinary research, sociology and social policy,and cultural studies, each receiving over or close toHKD$1 million. The University will continue to drive strategic development in digital transformation, and pursue its vision of becoming a leading liberal arts research university comprehensive in arts and sciences in the digital era.”

This year’s new projects include Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Mathematics, and the Physical Sciences - academic disciplines where Lingnan received RGC support for the first time. They include a project titled “Reduced-dimensional predictor learning of co-dynamic data from dynamic systems” led by President S. Joe Qin; anothertitled “Mathematical Modeling and Analysis of Graph Neural Networks” led by Prof Raymond Chan Hon-fu, Vice-President (Academics) cum Provost and Lam Man Tsan Chair Professor of Scientific Computing.; and one titled “Advancing Scalable Point Cloud Compression with Hierarchical Representation” by Prof Sam Kwong Tak-wu, Associate Vice-President (Strategic Research) and J.K. Lee Chair Professor of Computational Intelligence.

1. A large proportion of high-quality research projects

According to the RGC, projects rated 5 or 4.5 are considered high-quality. Of Lingnan’s 49 funded projects, 82 per cent, or 40 out of 49, had this score and,in the ECS applications, the proportion of high-qualityresearch projects exceeded the sector-wide average of all participating institutions.

2. Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship Scheme (HSSPFS)

Of the eight University Grants Committee (UGC)-funded universities, Lingnan’s success rate was 40 per cent in the HSSPFS, sharing first place with two other institutions. In terms of the total amount of funding under this scheme, Lingnan ranked second territory-wide.

3. General Research Fund (GRF)

Lingnan’s success rate of 57 per cent in Biology andMedicine was more than double the sector-wide average of 26 per cent. In Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Lingnan scored 50 per cent, again outperforming the average of 31 per cent. In both disciplines, Lingnan camefirst of all the UGC-funded universities (Table 1).

Table 1. Application success rate 

4. Early Career Scheme (ECS)

Lingnan University came first of the UGC-funded universities in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Physical Sciences, second in Social and Behavioural Sciences, and Humanities and Social Sciences, and third in Business Studies (Table 2).

Table 2. Application success rate