The Research Grants Council (RGC) will start accepting applications in July 2023 for the Areas of Excellence (AoE) Scheme and the Theme-based Research Scheme (TRS) 2024/25 exercises.

The AoE Scheme aims to provide support to the UGC-funded universities to build upon their existing strengths and develop them into areas of excellence while TRS aims to focus academic research efforts of UGC-funded universities on themes of strategic importance to the long-term development of Hong Kong.

Special Features -

 * Details of the Research Themes and the Grand Challenge Topics could be found here and they are subject to the call for application from RGC in July 2023.

Important Notes -

• Each applicant is only allowed to submit one application to either AoE or TRS as PC in the same exercise.
• If a TRS preliminary proposal does not fall under the themes and grand challenge topics of the TRS, the RGC will transfer the proposal directly to the AoE, or vice versa.
• If the same proposal is found to have been submitted to both AoE / TRS and Strategic Topics Grant (STG) in the same exercise, the proposal submitted to AoE / TRS will not be processed. A quick summary on the three schemes for easy reference.

Details on the AoE / TRS will be announced in our call circular which will be sent once the information is received from the RGC.