S.T. Yau High School Science Award (Asia)

The S.T. Yau High School Science Award (Asia) [ YHSA(Asia) ] is a research-based competition emphasising on innovation, originality, creativity and persistence in research activities.  It encourages students and teachers to formulate issues with quantitative precision and scientific rationales, with a view to nurturing students’ passion for scientific discovery, patience in investigation, and rigour in deliberation. YHSA(Asia) is initiated by Professor Shing-Tung Yau with the following goals:

1. To stimulate innovation, originality and creativity in scientific investigation among secondary school students in Asia.
2. To cultivate young talents in science and technology.
3. To encourage university professors, secondary school teachers and secondary schools to promote research activities.
4. To facilitate cultural exchanges among secondary school students from a diverse cultural and educational background.
5. To establish YHSA(Asia) as a reference for university admission.

In 2019-2020 a total of 285 teams from 20 countries and regions joined YHSA(Asia), in which 17 teams (6 from Hong Kong, 6 from Singapore, 3 from India and 2 from Australia) were recommended to compete with other regional finalists in the YHSA Finale in Beijing and obtained excellent results. Students have gained invaluable learning and rewarding experiences from the Award competition.

Recently, the 2020 Gold Prize awardee in Mathematics has been accepted for the highly competitive 2021 Research Science Institute (RSI) programme collaboratively sponsored with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

And the Departments of Economics and Mathematics of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) have recognised YHSA(Asia) as exceptional achievement that merits admission to their respective undergraduate programmes.

Very positive feedbacks on YHSA(Asia) have been received from the Faculty of Science of The University of Hong Kong and Department of Computer Science of City University of Hong Kong.

2021-2022 YHSA(Asia) has received support from the Innovation and Technology Fund. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material/event (or by members of the project team) do not reflect the views of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Innovation and Technology Commission or the General Support Programme Vetting Committee of the Innovation and Technology Fund.