The Research Grants Council (RGC) has conferred the title “RGC Senior Research Fellow” on Professor Ni Meng, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Construction and Environment and Professor of the Department of Building and Real Estate, and the title “RGC Research Fellow” on Professor Li Buyang, Professor of the Department of Applied Mathematics under the Senior Research Fellow Scheme (SRFS) and the Research Fellow Scheme (RFS) 2023/24 respectively for their excellence in cross-disciplinary research.

The accolades to the two PolyU scholars come with research funding grants of around HK$7.8 million for SRFS and HK$5.2 million for RFS, as well as relief from teaching and administrative duties for 60 months.

The achievements of the two researchers demonstrate PolyU’s distinguished academic and research capabilities in interdisciplinary fields, in addition to the University’s commitment to scientific research in addressing global societal needs.

The SRFS and RFS aim to provide sustained support to exceptionally outstanding researchers at the UGC-funded universities, with a view to facilitating their full dedication to research and development. Each scheme provides ten grants to scholars from any academic discipline.

Professor Ni Meng
- RGC Senior Research Fellow 2023/24

Professor Ni’s research interests cover areas including fuel cells, rechargeable metal-air batteries, electrochemical water-splitting, and electrochemical systems for low-grade waste heat utilisation. He serves as a reviewer for more than 80 academic journals including Science, Nature Energy, Nature Communications, Joule, and Advanced Materials.

 

His research project titled “Protonic ceramic fuel cells for clean power generation: From new cathode materials to new stack designs” is backed by SRFS.

Professor Li Buyang
- RGC Research Fellow 2023/24

Professor Li’s research endeavours in applied, numerical and computational mathematics have led to the discovery of solutions to a wide variety of mathematics questions. His contributions to the field of mathematics have also earned him the Hong Kong Mathematical Society Young Scholars Award 2022.

 

He receives support from RFS for his research project “Challenges, numerical analysis and new computational methods for curvature-driven surface evolutions and related problems”.