PolyU Design Awarded Maximum 4-Stars Rating by International Panel of Experts for its Research Impact and Environment

The University Grants Committee Research Assessment Exercise 2020 has announced that "Creative Arts, Performing Arts & Design" is the only academic sector with a university receiving the highest 4-stars rating in both “Impact" and "Environment" for all their case studies within that sector – achieved by PolyU.

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) School of Design (SD) announced today (26 May, 2021) its results from the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2020 by the University Grants Committee (UGC) of Hong Kong. The results reflect the assessment of the work from 35 eligible design researchers from SD together with PolyU’s Institute of Textiles and Clothing – the highest number across the seven universities funded by UGC under the RAE’s “Unit of Assessment (UoA) 38: Visual Arts, Design, Creative Media, Other Creative Arts and Creative Writing”.  

In the Overall Quality Profile, 42% of the submitted research outputs were judged by international experts to be “World Leading”, reaching the maximum 4-Stars rating.  In addition, in the Impact Sub-profile, 100% of the case studies have attained the maximum 4-Stars rating, showing “Outstanding impacts in terms of their reach and significance”.  In the Environment Sub-profile, 100% of the case studies reached the maximum 4-Stars level in showing “An environment that is conducive to producing research of world-leading quality, in terms of its vitality and sustainability”.   PolyU is the only university among all Panels in the RAE 2020 that has achieved a maximum 4-Stars rating in both “Impact” and “Environment” for all its case studies within the panel. 

Prof. Kun-pyo Lee, Dean of School of Design, Swire Chair Professor of Design, and Alex Wong Siu Wah Gigi Wong Fook Chi Professor in Product Design Engineering, said, "The result is a collective success for all School of Design researchers involved in the hard work of collecting and collating raw and unorganized data since the last evaluation in 2014. I am extremely pleased to see that the judges recognized the quality of our research, and in particular, the impact created by non-textual outputs.” 

Prof. Lee added, “The society should take careful note of the world-class quality of design research in Hong Kong that is on par with more popular disciplines such as “accountancy” and “economics and finance”.  The support, freedom and space provided by the School have lend itself to attract excellent researchers from around the world, and would pave the way for more quality international collaborative research in the future.”  

The RAE 2020 was implemented under the purview of the Research Assessment Exercise Group (RAEG) of the UGC.  Assessment Panel 12 for “Creative Arts, Performing Arts & Design” involved 14 distinguished scholars and research end-user with extensive professional knowledge and expertise in their respective fields.  Among them, 11 (or 79%) were non-local scholars from different parts of the world.  

The results of this panel are published on the UGC website (https://www.ugc.edu.hk/eng/ugc/activity/research/rae/2020/results.html).