To further encourage and support academic exchanges between young scholars from the Mainland and Hong Kong, the NSFC has initiated NSFC and the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong(RGC) joint research program of young scholars forum 2020. Details of application requirements are as follows:

1. Funding fields

Two areas include engineering and material science, and management science.

2. Eligibility of applicants

A. Applicants shall meet the following qualifications:

(1) Be younger than 45;

(2) Have senior academic title;

(3) Applicants must be a PI or main participant in a NSFC research grant (ongoing and will finish on or after December 31, 2021) with a duration of at least 3 years. The academic cooperation and exchange shall be closely focus on the research content of the funded NSFC project;

(4) Applicants shall be the actual person in charge of the project;

(5) Have good foundation of collaboration with Hong Kong researchers.

3. Funding amount and duration

The duration is three days at most between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2021 with the maximum funding intensity 0.2 million yuan per project(no indirect costs like management cost, performance expenditure, consumption on water, electricity and etc.).

※ The start time in application form should be January 1, 2021 and finish time should be December 31, 2021

4. Procedure of application

    Online application

Applicants shall fill out application forms online via the application system (https://isisn.nsfc.gov.cn/) and conduct the following steps:

Login the application system, click and select“在線申請(qǐng)”,“新增項(xiàng)目申請(qǐng)”, “國際(地區(qū))合作與交流項(xiàng)目”, “+ 展開”, “在華召開國際(地區(qū))學(xué)術(shù)會(huì)議(組織間合作協(xié)議項(xiàng)目)” ,“填寫申請(qǐng)”,“合作協(xié)議”,“NSFC-RGC項(xiàng)目(內(nèi)地-香港)”in turn. Then, enter the approval number of the funded NSFC project which you need to rely on so as to enter the interface to fill in the application form.

※ For applicants who have no application account, please send your name, academic title, email address, telephone number to kevingao@cuhk.edu.cn by July 16, 2020 to open account.

    Paperless submission

In the stage of submission, applicants shall only submit the online application, without submitting any hard copies.

5. Other requirements

A. Application limit

? This program isn’t subject to the total number limit;

? The total number of NSFC-RGC cooperation and exchange program a researcher applies for and undertakes as PI shall not exceed one.

B. For Application code 1, applicants must be select the affiliated codes of E or G;

C. The project title in Chinese shall be filled in the format of " NSFC-RGC青年學(xué)者論壇:XX", and the project title in English shall be filled in the format of "NSFC-RGC Forum for Young Scholars: XX". The XX (in Both Chinese and English) shall be the specific title of the forum theme.

D. Applicants shall list the agenda details in the section of "Meeting Schedule".

E. Applicants will not be required to list the detailed information of young scholars from the mainland and Hong Kong, but they shall specify the number of young scholars from both sides. 15-20 young scholars from both sides shall attend the forum and the proportion of young scholars must reach 50% at least of all participants.

F. The participants from the Mainland (Hong Kong) shall come from at least three universities or institutes in the Mainland (Hong Kong). Meanwhile, the number of participants from each university or institute shall not exceed two-thirds of the total number of members from each side.

G. Applicants shall only fill in “Travel/Conference/International Cooperation” fee in the section of budget table

6. Deadline

Applicants shall submit online application forms by Aug 20, 2020. After submission, the Schools/Institutes and RAO will review and feedback. Applicants shall submit the final application forms online by Aug 24, 2020, without having to submit any hard copies.

Contact information

Gao Shang      kevingao@cuhk.edu.cn