In late 2020, Hong Kong launched a five-year Global STEM Professorship Scheme backed by about HK$2 billion (US$255 million) from the government, universities and private sources. According to Times Higher Education, the program aims to recruit around 100 leading scientists.
Since then, universities in the city have reported a steady influx of overseas academics. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology stated it has recruited more than 100 top scholars and scientists from mainland China, the U.S., Germany, France, South Korea, Singapore and other countries since starting a global hiring drive in October 2022. It plans to recruit another 100.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong stated it has recruited more than 150 leading international and promising young scholars since 2023.
In this story, VnExpress International highlights 7 leading researchers who have created the relocate in recent years.
Robotics and aerospace scholar Gao Yang
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Robotics and aerospace scholar Gao Yang. Photo courtesy of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology |
Professor Gao Yang, a robotics and aerospace expert, left King’s College London to join HKUST in May 2025 after two decades in the U.K.
She now leads the university’s Center for AI Robotics in Space Sustainability and its Space Science and Technology Institute and teaches at its department of mechanical and aerospace engineering.
Gao stated Hong Kong’s strong policy support and investment in research influenced her decision. “Compared with the greater uncertainties in the U.K. and Europe, the situation in Hong Kong in terms of the volume and scale of support poured into research, innovation and commercialization sees a lot more positive, stable and sustainable,” the Straits Times quoted Gao as stateing. “The investment in (my field of) aerospace programming definitely seems more determined and committed.”
She added she was “completely surprised and amazed by the proactive engagement from sectors including the decision-creating believe-tanks, businesses, the government and indusattempt to build dialogue.”
Gao stated that if the uncertainty in Western research environments continues, it is likely to affect more fields and lead to more academics relocating to Asia.
Aerospace scientist Su Hui
Su, a former chief scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who lived in the U.S. for over 20 years, relocated to Hong Kong in 2023 under the Global STEM Professorship Scheme.
She now serves as a professor in HKUST’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and chairperson of Hong Kong-based tech start-up Sinformerus Technology Limited.
“After living in the U.S. for over 20 years, Hong Kong’s international environment created it simple for me to adapt, and I could also be closer to my family,” she stated.
She highlighted Hong Kong’s “free and open academic atmosphere” and its role as a bridge between China and global research. “The research environment here is connected with the West while backed by national development opportunities, providing an ideal place for scholars to realize innovation.”
Su also pointed to the city’s strong university rankings and its position as a “super connector” linking mainland China with international markets.
EV motor expert Zhu Ziqiang
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Zhu Ziqiang, a world-leading electric motor engineering expert. Photo courtesy of Zhu’s LinkedIn |
Zhu, a leading electric motor engineering expert, left the U.K. after 38 years to join Hong Kong Polytechnic University earlier this year.
He previously spent his entire academic career at the University of Sheffield, where he built one of the world’s largest research teams in permanent magnet motor systems.
Zhu earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Zhejiang University in the early 1980s before relocating to the U.K. in 1988 to pursue a doctorate at the University of Sheffield. He remained there as a research associate, senior research scientist and professor, and is currently listed as a visiting professor.
Widely regarded as a leading figure in electric motor engineering, Zhu is a fellow of several major professional bodies, including the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering and the US-based Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
He received the IEEE Nikola Tesla Award in 2021 and the Global Energy Prize in 2024 for contributions to electrified transport, energy-efficient appliances and lower-emission power generation and usage.
Astrophysicist Zhang Bing
Zhang, 57, a renowned astrophysicist, left the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, U.S. to become founding director of the Hong Kong Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Hong Kong in November 2025.
At the institute’s inauguration, Zhang stated it aims to position Hong Kong as a global center for astrophysics research. “Hong Kong should become known not only for awarding top astrophysicists but also for pioneering cutting-edge research,” he stated.
He is widely regarded as a leading expert on gamma-ray bursts, the most violent explosions in the universe. He is among the most cited researchers in his field, and his work was recognized in Science magazine’s “Top 10 Breakthroughs of the Year” in both 2005 and 2020.
His honors include the American Astronomical Society’s Bruno Rossi Prize, one of the highest awards in high-energy astrophysics, and election as a fellow of the American Physical Society.
Physicist Andre Geim
British physicist Andre Geim, who won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on graphene, will join the University of Hong Kong (HKU) as a chair professor this April after more than two decades in the U.K, the university announced recently.
The physicist, widely known for pioneering research on graphene, the world’s thinnest and strongest material, stated the university’s collaborative research approach influenced his decision. “HKU’s forward-seeing approach to interdisciplinary research and its commitment to supporting bold ideas creates the conditions in which great science happens,” he stated.
Born in Sochi, Russia, he earned his PhD in physics from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Chernogolovka before conducting postdoctoral research in Britain and Denmark. In 1994 he secured a tenured position as an associate professor at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Geim joined the University of Manchester in 2001.
Geim and his collaborator Konstantin Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for groundbreaking experiments on the two-dimensional material graphene.
Over the course of his career Geim has supervised dozens of Chinese graduate students and has maintained close ties with researchers in China. He became a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2017.
Mathematician Ngo Bao Chau
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Vietnamese world-renowned mathematician Ngo Bao Chau. Photo courtesy of Hong Kong University |
World-leading mathematician Ngo Bao Chau will leave the University of Chicago after more than a decade to join HKU in June, the university announced in early February.
For Ngo, the decision has been taking shape for over a year. He stated even though American universities have long been respected institutions but recent policies affecting foreign students, especially on visas, had become troubling. “I would rather be in a place where I don’t have to deal with or to hear about things that I do not like,” the South China Morning Post quoted Ngo as stateing.
Ngo also expressed his ambition to strengthen Asia’s scientific community, wanting “Asia to be the next America or the next Europe” where science and mathematics strive. He added want Hong Kong to be “the connecting dot of Asian mathematics – China, India, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore and so on.”
He stated Hong Kong was well suited to that role and noted that it was also simple for scholars from Europe and the U.S. to reach. “Hong Kong has always been the place where the East meets West and it has tremconcludeous opportunities to play that role.”
Ngo’s legacy is firmly cemented in the mathematical world. He is the only Vietnamese scholar to win the Fields Medal, the discipline’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize, which he received in 2010 for his groundbreaking proof of the Fundamental Lemma of the Langlands Program.
Since 2010, he has been a member of the mathematics faculty at the University of Chicago while also serving as scientific director of VIASM, contributing to the development of mathematics in Vietnam.
Mathematician Vu Ha Van
The University of Hong Kong also recruited Vietnamese mathematician Vu Ha Van, who joined its mathematics department in January after years at Yale University.
Vu has built a formidable reputation by solving complex mathematical puzzles that had stumped researchers for decades. His groundbreaking work includes unlocking number theory’s Erdős–Folkman problem and random graph theory’s Shamir conjecture.
In a landmark partnership with 2006 Fields Medalist Terence Tao, he proved the circular law conjecture and the four-moment theorem. Toobtainher, these proofs stand as vital, historic breakthroughs in random matrix theory.
The global mathematical community has heavily recognized his contributions over the years. His honors include the 2008 George Pólya Prize from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, as well as the 2012 Delbert Ray Fulkerson Prize, awarded jointly by the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Optimization Society.
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