Associate Vice President (Global Partnerships)

Professor Geoffrey Shen is Associate Vice President (Global Partnerships), Director of Global Engagement, Chair Professor of Construction Management, and Master of the STARS Residential College of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU).

Professor Shen graduated from Tsinghua University in China with BEng in Structural Engineering in 1986, received the prestigious Sino-British Friendship Scholarship in 1988, and earned his PhD from the University of Salford in the UK in 1993. He joined PolyU in 1994 and was promoted to Chair Professor of Construction Management in 2008. During the 30+ years at PolyU, he served as the Head of the Department of Building and Real Estate (2008-2014), Associate Dean of the Faculty of Construction and Environment (2007-2021), and Interim Vice President (Student Affairs) (2018).

Professor Shen is a world-renowned scholar in construction management with a special interest and proven track record of accomplishment in sustainable construction. His outstanding academic achievements have been recognised locally and internationally. He is one of the world’s “Highly Cited Researchers” in 2023 and 2024 by Clarivate. This award is given to the world's top 0.1% scientists and social scientists whose academic work “has demonstrated significant and broad influence in their research fields and has been widely cited by international scholars”. He is also one of the world's Top 2% Most-Cited Scientists according to the research by Stanford University. He was appointed as a member of the built environment panel of the Research Assessment Exercise in Hong Kong in 2006, Chairman of the Global Leadership Forum in Construction Engineering and Management Programs between 2014 and 2016, and a member of the Engineering Panel of the Research Grants Council in Hong Kong from 2017 to 2023. He has led numerous research projects, and led large research teams to successfully secure several major research grants from external sources, including the Collaborative Research Scheme jointly funded by the Natural Science Foundation in China and the Research Grants Council in Hong Kong (2024-2028) and the Strategic Public Policy Research Funding Scheme funded by the Chief Executive’s Policy Unit of the HKSAR Government (2024-2027). Under his leadership, his research team has received the prestigious Research Team of the Year Award in 2022 from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. He is the Deputy Editor of the academic journal Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management and serves on the editorial boards of several leading journals in construction engineering and management. He has also been invited to give keynote presentations at many international academic conferences.

Professionally, Professor Shen is an Eminent Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and Past President of the Hong Kong Institute of Value Management. As a certified Value Management Facilitator (List A), he has provided professional services for the design and construction of around 100 large and complex construction projects of the HKSAR Government. He received the prestigious Presidential Citation Award from SAVE International (the premier international society in advancing and promoting the Value Methodology) for his “energetic and engaging effort to enhance value research and education” in 2009. He was appointed as a member of the Advanced Construction Technologies Sub-committee of the Construction Innovation and Technology Fund between 2018 and 2020. In 2024, the Construction Industry Council in Hong Kong appointed him to the Committee on Construction Safety.