Congratulations to Seven Faculty Members from the Department of Data Science awarded GRF/ECS Grants for 2025-26
The Department of Data Science (DS) has achieved a remarkable milestone by securing HK$6.5 million in funding for seven cutting-edge research projects under the 2025/26 General Research Fund (GRF) and Early Career Scheme (ECS) announced by the Research Grants Council (RGC). This prestigious recognition is a testament to the Department's unwavering dedication to advancing the frontiers of data science through innovative and impactful research.
The RGC GRF/ECS exercise is a highly competitive funding scheme that supports research projects at eight UGC-funded universities in Hong Kong. This year's success is particularly noteworthy, as seven faculty members from DS have been awarded grants. This marks a significant improvement from last year's five awardees and HK$5.3 million in funding, highlighting the Department’s growing influence and excellence in the field of data science.
We extend our heartfelt congratulations to our Principal Investigators, including Professor Clint HO, Professor Lishuai LI, Professor Minghua CHEN, Professor Xiangyu ZHAO, Professor Lijia WANG, Professor Zimu ZHOU and Professor Lu YU. Their dedication and talent will undoubtedly lead to impactful research outcomes, enhancing our Department's reputation and contributing to the broader scientific community.
Details of the funded grants are as follows:
| Name of Principle Investigator | Project Title | Grant Awarded | Scheme |
|---|---|---|---|
| Professor Clint HO | On Robust Regret for Sequential Decision-Making Problem | 0.8M | GRF |
| Professor Lishuai LI | Physics-informed generative methods of aircraft trajectory for terminal airspace design evaluation | 1.2M | GRF |
| Professor Minghua CHEN | Developing Neural Network Schemes for Solving Two-Stage Stochastic AC Optimal Power Flow Problems: Exploiting the Partial Permutation-Invariance Property | 1.1M | GRF |
| Professor Xiangyu ZHAO | Information Retrieval in the Era of Large Language Models: Understanding, Generalization, and Trustworthiness | 0.9M | GRF |
| Professor Lijia WANG | Neyman-Pearson Classification Methods for Prioritizing Important Categories and Enhancing Robustness to Group-Wise Sample Bias | 0.9M | GRF |
| Professor Zimu ZHOU | Difficulty-Aware Federated Learning for Input-Adaptive Inference on Edge Devices | 0.9M | GRF |
| Professor Lu YU | Towards Mathematical Foundations of Diffusion Models | 0.9M | ECS |