Before joining The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK), Professor Cai Yuzhuo spent more than two decades with the Higher Education Group in the Faculty of Management and Business at Tampere University, Finland. During this period, he held various positions, including Assistant Professor, Senior Researcher, Senior Lecturer, Research Director and Acting Professor. He also served as Deputy Director of the Research Centre on Transnationalism and Transformation (TRANSIT), which spans three faculties at Tampere University, and as Co-Director of the Sino-Finnish Education Research Centre at the Sino-Finnish Joint Learning Innovation Institute, a network involving more than 20 Chinese and Finnish universities. From July to December 2024, he was a Visiting Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong. From October 2010 to January 2011, he was a Visiting Scholar in the Graduate School of Education at Peking University.
Professor Cai holds three international editorial positions: Co-Editor-in-Chief of Triple Helix, Co-Editor of the Journal of Studies in International Education, and Associate Editor of the Journal of the Knowledge Economy. He also serves on the editorial and review boards of leading journals, including the British Educational Research Journal and Higher Education.
Professor Cai holds leadership positions in three professional associations. He is Vice President of the Triple Helix Association (since June 2026); Vice Deputy Chair of the Academic Committee of the International Cooperation and Exchange Committee of the Association for the Employment of University Graduates (January 2026–May 2028); and Executive Director of the China Comparative Education Society of the Chinese Society of Education (since 2025).
His research is internationally recognised in institutional theory and its application to higher education, the internationalisation of higher education, the Triple Helix model of innovation, universities’ engagement in innovation ecosystems, and graduate employability. He has produced more than 170 scholarly outputs, with publications appearing in leading journals across several disciplines, including Higher Education, Studies in Higher Education, Minerva, Technovation, the International Journal of Management Reviews, and Scientometrics. He has been included in the Stanford/Elsevier World’s Top 2% Scientists list in the field of Education since 2022.
A notable example of Professor Cai’s leadership in competitively funded research was his role as Principal Investigator of NEXT-UP (2025–2028), a €2.9 million Horizon Europe project examining young people’s education-to-employment transitions in post-COVID-19 Europe. Following his move to EdUHK, he has continued contributing to the project as Co-Principal Investigator. He has also coordinated four Nordic or Finnish projects and led work packages in nine EU-funded projects.
Professor Cai has evaluated research grant applications for the European Union and funding bodies in several European countries. He has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank, contributing to the design of a master’s degree programme in Higher Education, Research and Innovation at Ilia State University in Georgia.