Fuelling the future
Great news! Hong Kong, though a tiny piece of land, has soared to become the world’s most innovative region – and CUHK has had a big part to play in getting it there. The title comes courtesy of the World Intellectual Property Organization, which recently named the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou cluster top of the tree in its 2025 Global Innovation Index of the World’s Top 100 Innovation Clusters, the first time the region has been given the number one position.
The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) was singled out for praise for its excellence in research, innovation and technology transfer – precisely the core strengths of CUHK. As one of the key forces propelling the Greater Bay Area into a global innovation highland. The University has been one of the leading contributors to making the region a hotbed of innovation. It holds more than 2,400 patents, and has been the prime mover among local universities in annual patent filings over the past five years. CUHK also leads in total patent applications, patents granted and intellectual property licensing revenue. Its success has been propelled by developments like the opening of four State Key Laboratories and six InnoHK research centres, which have filed more than 350 patents among them.
CUHK’s formidable reputation for innovation received yet another welcome boost in October, when its teams scooped no fewer than nine awards at the China International College Students’ Innovation Competition 2025, setting a new record for the best performance ever by a Hong Kong delegation. The Competition launched by China’s Ministry of Education in 2015, which has quickly become one of the world’s most important innovation contests.
Eight CUHK teams qualified for the finals at Zhengzhou University after excelling in the inaugural Hong Kong and Macao Regional Competition. They notched up an incredible five golds, two silvers and one bronze, with one of the gold winners, “Next generation data center interconnects with integrated neuromorphic photonic processor”, also taking home the national third place.
The competition was extremely intense, with seven major regional events held in Europe, Africa, and other locations worldwide. The event attracted 5,673 universities across 161 countries and regions, involving a total of 6.19 million projects and 24.43 million participants. CUHK’s outstanding results in such a fiercely competitive arena truly demonstrate its exceptional strength.
Storming the charts
Everyone at CUHK is fully aware of just what an exceptional university it is. Recently, CUHK had validation of its excellence from some of the most authoritative sources of all, as the world’s two leading rankings of higher educational institutions both handed it a stellar report card.
First, CUHK soared to 41st position in the newly released Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2026. Not only has the University risen up those rankings by three places; the result also marks its highest ever position. The world’s top universities were judged according to an exhaustive list of 17 criteria, with CUHK chalking up a perfect score of 100 in: institutional income, research productivity, research income, research excellence and patents. It recorded the biggest spikes this year in its scores for doctorate-bachelor ratio and teaching reputation.
Completing the portrait of outstanding achievement, in the other of the world’s most trusted lists of top higher educational institutions, the QS Asia University Rankings, CUHK placed seventh in Asia for 2026.
Music to our ears
CUHK brings together international teaching and research talent and nurtures elite students.The University is privileged to have one of Hong Kong’s most talented classical music conductors, Vivian Ip, among its faculty, offering aspiring students of conducting the opportunity to learn from the best. Her pre-eminence in the fiendishly competitive field was confirmed recently by the third prize that she earned at the leading International Ferenc Fricsay Conducting Competition in Hungary. She becomes the first conductor from Hong Kong to win recognition at the biennial event, which is named in honour of Hungary’s most eminent 20th century conductor, Ferenc Fricsay.
The competition is designed to identify the most talented young conductors from around the world, and Vivian won out against a tough field of more than four hundred competitors. She had to battle her way through four gruelling rounds, sometimes getting as little as 12 hours to prepare for conducting the next piece. Her efforts were judged by a jury of leading practitioners from around the world, including New York City Opera Principal Conductor Constantine Orbelian.
Vivian’s deep association with CUHK began as an undergraduate, and she returned to teach at the University in 2019. She serves as the Associate Conductor of the Hong Kong Sinfonietta and is a former Assistant Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. She has also been the recipient of numerous other honours, including the Hong Kong Outstanding Young Musician Award in 2024.
