Before joining EdUHK, Professor Cai spent over two decades at the Higher Education Group, Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, Finland. There, he held various roles, including Assistant Professor, Senior Researcher, Senior Lecturer, Research Director and Acting Professor. Additionally, he served as Deputy Director at the Research Centre on Transnationalism and Transformation (TRANSIT), which spans three faculties at Tampere University, and Co-Director of the Sino-Finnish Education Research Centre at the Sino-Finnish Joint Learning Innovation Institute, engaging more than 20 Chinese and Finnish universities. Between July and December 2024, he served as a Visiting Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong.

Professor Chai holds editorial roles as 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. Additionally, he serves on the editorial and review boards of multiple prestigious journals, including the British Educational Research Journal and Higher Education.

His research is internationally recognised in areas such as institutional theory analysis of higher education, the internationalisation of higher education, the Triple Helix model of innovation, engagement by universities in innovation ecosystems, and graduate employability. With over 150 academic publications, his research has been featured in leading journals across multiple disciplines, including Higher Education, Studies in Higher Education, Minerva, Technovation, International Journal of Management Reviews, and Scientometrics. He has also been recognised in Stanford University’s Top 2% Scientist Rankings in the field of education since 2022.

Among Professor Cai’s various research leadership roles in competitive projects, his most notable achievement is serving as Principal Investigator of the Horizon Europe project NEXT-UP (2025-2028), which examines youth education-employment transitions in post-COVID-19 Europe and has received a €2.9 million grant. Following his transition to EdUHK, he has continued his involvement in the project as Co-Investigator. Additionally, he has coordinated four Nordic or Finnish projects and led work packages in nine EU-funded projects.

He has also served as an evaluator for multiple research grant applications submitted to the European Union and several European countries. Additionally, he has 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.