Research Focus

Aspiring to be a leading, research-led, liberal arts University in Asia, Hong Kong Baptist University is committed to conducting world-leading investigations that extends the frontiers of knowledge, tackles global challenges and benefits the community at home and abroad. 

Pursuing research excellence is one of the priorities of the University’s Institutional Strategic Plan 2018-2028. The University keeps enhancing its capacity and strength to produce world-class research with an aim to bring significant impact to the society. The University will achieve this by:

• developing clusters of strength to maximise knowledge outputs and impact 
• establishing university-wide research themes to focus resources on strategic clusters 
• building up research human capacity as well as broaden and deepen research training 
• enhancing the learning experiences of scholars and postgraduate students 
• supporting diverse approaches to scholarship 
• addressing community needs through applied research 
• developing research collaborations with strategic partners around the world 
• producing new knowledge that improves people’s lives

Strategic Clusters of Strengths

Encompassing HKBU’s research strengths, the University has identified three strategic clusters to enhance the University’s research coherence and foster the alliances of research strengths.

• Art, Culture and Creative Media/Practice
• Health, Chinese Medicine and Drug Discovery
• Science, Technology, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data

University-wide Interdisciplinary Research Themes

To organise cross-faculty research along the directions of the three strategic clusters, the University has identified 6 research themes to underpin interdisciplinary and theme-based research, for promoting research excellence and knowledge/technology transfer, and for attracting global collaboration.

Each theme aims to promote world-class research, and vibrant intellectual interactions where researchers and collaborators can explore and discover novel solutions for grand challenges in the following focused themes:

1. Augmented Creativity: artistic/media practice for creative industries that include text-based production, sound and music performance, visual arts, film arts, game industries, advertising, and journalism.
2. Computational Medicine: integrating frontier sciences and Chinese Medicine, this theme engages the development of a Data Encyclopaedia & Molecular Compendium of Materia Medica, as well as Computational Drug Discovery.
3. System Health: employs multidisciplinary approaches to explore complex systems such as life systems, the natural environment, and human society. Focuses on the biopsychosocial model of health, and both biological and social health systems.
4. Smart Society: developing smart societies using Big Data and AI, including geoinformatics, environmental science, computational social sciences, public policy and administration, societal analytics/ visualization, politics, and smart education.
5. Data Economy: the confluence of technology and innovation promises to place HK at the forefront of a new financial frontier. This theme has varied focuses, ranging from FinTech to Data-Driven Marketing and Supply Chains to AI and Industry 4.0-based business.
6. Ethical and Theoretical AI: answers questions raised by the rapid rise of autonomous systems and AI. Such advances widen possibilities to action, offering ever more complex choices. What ethical factors should guide and/or constrain our actions?

Faculty Niche Research Areas

In addition to the University-wide Interdisciplinary Research Themes, each Faculty embraces their own niche research areas to increase the overall research capacity of the University: