NEWS & EVENTS

COMS Prof. Regina Chen Awarded Leading House Asia Pacific Research Network Grant COMS Prof. Regina Chen Awarded Leading House Asia Pacific Research Network Grant
COMS Prof. Regina Chen Awarded Leading House Asia Pacific Research Network Grant

An international research network, including Professor Regina Chen of COMS, has been awarded a competitive Research Network Grant under the Leading House Asia Pacific 2025 Funding Call. The grant, valued at CHF 50,000 (approximately HK$500,000), will support a trilateral research initiative titled "Communicating Net-Zero Effectively: A Trilateral Research Network Across Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Australia."

Besides Prof. Chen, the ambitious project includes Prof. Nadine Strauss, (University of Zurich), Prof. Flora Hung-Baesecke (University of Technology Sydney), and Prof. Martin Bryant (University of Technology Sydney).

The funded project addresses one of the defining communication challenges of our era: how organisations, governments, and public bodies can communicate net-zero goals and commitments in ways that are credible, transparent, and effective across distinct cultural and regulatory contexts.

The collaboration is notably interdisciplinary in scope, drawing on expertise from HKBU's AI and Governance Lab at the AI Media Centre (School of Communication), as well as UTS's Green Infrastructure Lab in the Faculty of Design and Society. The convergence of communication scholarship, artificial intelligence, and sustainable design thinking positions this research network to offer a uniquely multidimensional perspective on climate-related public communication.

The Leading House Asia Pacific is a bilateral science and technology cooperation programme of Switzerland with the Asia-Pacific region. Funded by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), the Leading House is hosted by the University of Zurich (UZH) with the mandate to coordinate activities on behalf of the entire Swiss higher education sector for the 2025-2028 funding period. This mandate builds upon the foundation established by ETH Zurich, which previously served as Leading House Asia from 2008 to 2025.

The award falls under the Research Network Grant strand of the Scientific Collaboration Fund, which supports trilateral or multilateral research networks between universities or research institutes in Switzerland and the Asia-Pacific.