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Prof. Fanny M.C. Cheung, Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Choh-Ming Li Professor of Psychology of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), was presented the 2014 Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to the International Advancement of Applied Psychology by the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) at the International Congress of Applied Psychology held in Paris earlier.  The Award is presented every four years to one or two psychologists who have made distinguished scientific contributions to and an impact on international psychology.  This is the first time an Asian psychologist has won this award and, so far, there have only been 10 awardees in total. 

Professor Cheung remarked, ‘I am honored to share this distinguished award as the first Asian recipient with 9 other world class psychologists before me.  It shows the international psychological community has come to recognize the important voice that Chinese psychology can contribute to the scientific development of mainstream psychology.’ 

Professor Cheung plays a leading role in developing and validating culturally relevant assessment tools in applied psychology.  She helped to translate the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI and MMPI-2), the most widely used and researched standardized psychometric test of adult personality and psychopathology, into Chinese and helped standardize the Chinese versions using large-scale representative national samples.  She then initiated the research programme to develop the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI), the first comprehensive personality measure in Asia.  The CPAI is now recognized as the best indigenously derived personality measure that demonstrates definitive evidence of cultural uniqueness with incremental validity. 

By translating the CPAI into six other languages, she demonstrated the cross-cultural relevance of the interpersonal relatedness dimension.  These cross-cultural comparisons of the CPAI provide insight into the emic-etic discourse from the non-Western perspective.  Her landmark article in American Psychologist in 2011 serves as a call to mainstream psychology to incorporate the voice of non-western cultures in their epistemology and training. 

As Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Professor Cheung promotes research excellence and interdisciplinary research collaboration at CUHK.  She joined CUHK in 1977 and was formerly Dean of the Faculty of Social Science and Chairperson of the Department of Psychology.  Professor Cheung is a pioneer of gender research in Chinese societies.  An active advocate for promoting women’s status through scientific research, she established the Gender Research Centre in 1985 and initiated the Gender Studies Programme at the University, and helped to train the trainers in gender studies in China in the 1990s.  Professor Cheung is concurrently Director of the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at CUHK.  She is now recognized as a leader in the contemporary Chinese women’s movement that has gained respect and credibility through its grounding in a firm knowledge base. 

About the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) 

Established in 1920, the IAAP is the oldest international association of psychologists and is nowadays supported by nearly 3,000 members from more than 80 countries who are active in the different disciplines of Psychology through its 18 divisions.  Its mission is to promote the science and practice of applied psychology and to facilitate interaction and communication about applied psychology around the world.  Every four years IAAP organizes a world congress of applied psychology which serves as a review of advances in applied psychology and unites several thousand psychologists from all over the world.