Through the execution and completion of a substantial research project, the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Program seeks to prepare students to become mature, independent scientists who are capable of the design, initiation and execution of their own original research in academic or industrial environment. It requires the application of considerable depth and breadth of scholarship, and there must be substantial discovery of new science.

The programs are offered by the Department of Chemistry, with the following research foci and state-of-the-art facilities, training students to conduct independent research and to equip them to be mature and independent scientists.

Research Foci

• Analytical/ Environmental Chemistry: Method development and applications for environmental and bioanalytical chemistry, and atmospheric chemistry.
• Chemical Biology: Protein organization in metabolism, signal transduction.
• Material Sciences: Nanomaterials, biomaterials, polymeric and organic electronic materials, and energy materials.
• Molecular Dynamics and Structure of Complex Systems: Laser-based spectroscopy, dynamics of biomolecular and supramolecular systems, computational chemistry (protein/ RNA folding).
• Synthetic Chemistry: Synthetic methodology, organometallic chemistry and catalysis.

The department has international links with major chemical industries and has played a key role in setting up university-wide collaborations involving universities, research institutions and companies in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Japan, Europe and the US.

Concentrations

• Molecular Medicine Concentration
• Nano Science and Technology Concentration
• Scientific Computation Concentration