Introducing 2025 PMI Young Researcher Award Winner: Sujuan Zhang

Emily is a Content Strategist for PMI.

  Career Development   Leadership  

Sujuan Zhang is this year’s PMI Young Researcher Award recipient, recognized for her impactful and forward-looking contributions that are shaping the future of project management research.

Sujuan is currently a Lecturer in Project Organizing at the School of Project Management at The University of Sydney, where she also serves as Program Director of the Master of Project and Program Management. She holds a PhD in Construction Project Management from the University of Hong Kong, along with master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Tianjin University in China.

“I feel deeply grateful and encouraged,” Sujuan said. “The recognition gave me a strong sense that the research path I have been pursuing, sometimes slowly and quietly, has been meaningful and valued by the broader project management community. I see this recognition not as an endpoint, but as an encouragement to continue the good work [and] to ask better questions, engage more closely with practice, and contribute more thoughtfully to the project management field in the years ahead.”

At the core of Sujuan’s work is a focus on the owner domain of project organizing, an area that is gaining increasing attention as project complexity, public accountability, and societal expectations continue to grow. Her research explores how project owner organizations—particularly in…

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