Academic Staff

Trained as an occupational therapist, Prof. Hector Tsang had more than 10 years of clinical experience in psychiatric and geriatric rehabilitation before moving to PolyU in 1997 as Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor and then Professor in 2002 and 2010 respectively. Between 2017 and January 2024, Prof. Tsang served as the Head of the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences. In 2018, he was appointed as Cally Kwong Mei Wan Professor in Psychosocial Rehabilitation and then promoted to Chair Professor of Rehabilitation Sciences in July 2019. Prof. Tsang has been focusing his research on neuropsychiatric rehabilitation for people with severe mental illness (SMI) and integrative medicine over the past two decades. His studies on workplace social skills, and integrated supported employment as vocational rehabilitation strategies for people with severe mental illness have attracted worldwide interest. In 2007, he spent his sabbatical year at the School of Medicine, Yale University, and investigated the role of social cognition in community function of schizophrenia. Prof. Tsang has secured more than HK$279 million in research grants and donations from Hong Kong, the Chinese Mainland, and around the world, including the USA and Australia. With more than 300 academic publications, his H-index is 59 with over 13,000 citations. These impactful research works brought him the recognition as among the world’s top 2% most-cited scientists by Stanford University from 2021 to 2025 consecutively, and as one of the worldwide top 1% of scholars named an “Expert in Exercise Movement Techniques” by Expertscape in 2021. He is also ranked 5th worldwide by Google Scholar in psychiatric rehabilitation and 11th in integrative medicine. Besides, Prof. Tsang is the Honorary Professor of The University of Hong Kong, and the Visiting Professor of Peking University, Sichuan University, and Kunming Medical University. He has also recently been appointed as Nanshan Scholar by the Guangzhou Medical University. The consultancy studies Prof. Tsang conducted for the Government of the HKSAR, including the "Review of the Rehabilitation Programme Plan in Hong Kong", “Needs and Support Required of Carers of Elderly Persons and of Persons with Disabilities in Hong Kong” and “Review of the Comprehensive Child Development Service” have also been translated into various government policies and created great positive impact in the local community.