QS Higher Education Post Summit: APAC 2024

Professor Raymond Hon-fu CHAN

Vice-President (Academics) cum Provost, Chair Professor of Scientific Computing
Lingnan University

Raymond Chan is vice-president (academics) cum provost at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. He is a fellow of the US Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), American Mathematical Society, and China Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He also serves on the SIAM board of trustees and is vice-president of the International Consortium of Chinese Mathematicians. Professor Chan is co-director and chief scientist of the Hong Kong Centre for Cerebro-cardiovascular Health Engineering, and dean of the College of Science and chair professor in mathematics at City University of Hong Kong (CityU), as well as vice-president (student affairs) from 2021-23. Before joining CityU, he worked at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (US), The University of Hong Kong, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Professor Xin YAO

Vice-President (Research and Innovation), Tong Tin Sun Chair Professor of Machine Learning

Lingnan University

Prof Xin YAO is the Vice-President (Research and Innovation) and the Tong Tin Sun Chair Professor of Machine Learning at Lingnan University, Hong Kong SAR. His major research interests include machine learning, evolutionary computation and artificial intelligence in general. His work has won many awards, including IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation Outstanding Paper Awards, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks Outstanding Paper Award, etc.  Prof Yao was elected as an IEEE Fellow in 2003. He won the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award in 2012, the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Evolutionary Computation Pioneer Award in 2013, and the IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award in 2020. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation in 2003-08 and the President of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society in 2014-15. 

Professor KWONG Sam Tak Wu 

Associate Vice-President (Strategic Research), J. K. Lee Chair Professor of Computational Intelligence, Dean of the School of Graduate Studies, Acting Dean of the School of Data Science
Lingnan University
 

Professor KWONG Sam Tak Wu is the Associate Vice-President (Strategic Research), J.K. Lee Chair Professor of Computational Intelligence, the Dean of the School of Graduate Studies and the Acting Dean of the School of Data Science of Lingnan University. Professor Kwong is a distinguished scholar in evolutionary computation, artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, and image/video processing, with a strong record of scientific innovations and real-world impacts. Professor Kwong was listed as the World’s Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University since 2022 and one of the most highly cited researchers by Clarivate in 2022 and 2023. He has also been actively engaged in knowledge transfer between academia and industry. He was elevated to IEEE Fellow in 2014 for his contributions to optimization techniques in cybernetics and video coding. He was a Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA) in 2022, and the President of the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society (SMCS) in 2021-23. He is a fellow of US National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and the Hong Kong Academy Awards of Engineering and Sciences (HKAES). Professor Kwong has a prolific publication record with over 350 journal articles, and 160 conference papers with an h-index of 84 based on Google Scholar. He is currently the associate editor of a number of leading IEEE transaction journals.

Professor CHEN Xi

Dean of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, Chair Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies
Lingnan University

Professor Chen Xi is Chair Professor and Dean of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Lingnan University. He received his Ph.D. in Solid Mechanics from Harvard University, and spent 20 years as a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering at Columbia University, before joining Lingnan in 2023. He received numerous awards including the NSF CAREER Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), ASME Sia Nemat-Nasser Early Career Award, ASME Thomas J. R. Hughes Young Investigator Award, and SES Young Investigator Medal. He is a Fellow of ASME. He has published over 400 journal papers with a h-index over 70. He uses multiscale theoretical, experimental, and numerical approaches to investigate various research frontiers in engineering science addressing real-world challenges in energy, environment, nanotechnology and biology. 

Professor Richard WALKER

Chair Professor and Head of the Department of Government and International Affairs, Director of the Lingnan University Institute for Advanced Study (LUIAS)

Lingnan University

Richard M. Walker holds the Chan Hon Pun Professorship in Behavioural and Policy Sciences and is Chair Professor of Public Management in the Department of Public and International Affairs at City University of Hong Kong. Richard has served as Dean and Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and was head of the Department of Public Policy. He is Director of the Laboratory for Public Management and Policy and the Centre for Public Affairs and Law. Richard was President of the Public Management Research Association, a board member of the International Research Society for Public Administration and is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Richard’s research has been funded by research councils in China, Hong Kong, Portugal, South Korea and the UK and the OCED and UNDP. His is work is widely cited in academia and practice. 

Professor Jianwei HUANG

Associate Vice President (Institutional Development)

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen

Jianwei Huang (Fellow, IEEE) is a Presidential Chair Professor and Associate Vice President with the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and the Associate Director with the Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society. He received his PhD in ECE from Northwestern University in 2005 and worked as a Postdoc Research Associate with Princeton University during 2005-2007. From 2007 until 2018, he was with the Department of Information Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include network optimization and economics, with applications in communication networks, energy networks, data markets, and crowd intelligence. He has published over 360 papers in leading international venues, with a Google Scholar citation of more than 17500 and an H-index of 68. He has co-authored 11 Best Paper Awards, including the 2011 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award in Wireless Communications. He has been an IEEE ComSoc distinguished lecturer, a Clarivate Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher, and an Elsevier Most Cited Chinese Researcher. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering and an Associate Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society.

Professor Weijia JIA

Director of Institute of AI and Future Networks

Beijing Normal University (BNU-Zhuhai), China
 

Prof Weijia Jia is currently a Chair Professor and Director of AI and Future Networking Research Institute of Beijing Normal University and UIC, Zhuhai, Guangdong, China. His contributions have been recoganized for the research of optimal network routing and deployment; vertex cover; anycast and multicast protocols; sensors networking; knowledge relation extractions; large-language model and intelligent edge computing. He has over 600 publications in the prestige international journals/conferences and research books and book chapters. He has received the best product awards from the International Science & Tech. Expo (Shenzhen) in 2011/2012 and the 1st Prize of Scientific Research Awards from the Ministry of Education of China in 2017 (list 2), the 4th Place on intelligent computing power ranking list at the 5th China Super Computing Conference 2023, and many provincial science and tech awards. He has served as area editor for various prestige international journals, chair and PC member/keynote speaker for many top international conferences. He is the Fellow of IEEE and the Distinguished Member of CCF

Professor Jimmy LEE

Director, University Planning Office
Associate Head, New Asia College
Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
 

Professor Jimmy Lee has over thirty years of experience as academic and administrator at CUHK.  He is currently heading a team to take care of the data needs of the University and directing special IT and data projects to improve institutional efficiency.  He is also a firm believer and contributor to the college system.  In his immediate past, he was Associate Dean (Education) of the Faculty of Engineering.  His research interests lie in Artificial Intelligence.  He is active professionally and often leads panels in academic and professional accreditations.  With a conviction in education, he hosts popular MOOCs on Coursera and has been named “Top Instructor” in the past years.  He was recipient of the University Education Award and twice the Vice-Chancellor Exemplary Teaching Award.  Jimmy obtained his BMath and MMath degrees from the University of Waterloo and PhD degree from the University of Victoria.

Professor LI Juan Julie

Associate Vice-President (Mainland Strategy) and Chair Professor of the Department of Marketing

City University of Hong Kong

Professor Julie Li is Chair Professor of Marketing at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK). She currently serves as Associate Vice President (Mainland Strategy) at CityUHK and as Vice President (Academic) at CityUHK (Dongguan). Her research interests include marketing strategy, value creation, innovation, and interdisciplinary research. Professor Li has earned the distinction of being among the top 2% of scientists worldwide, as measured by the impact of her research publications. She serves as the Chairman of the Competitive Research Funding Schemes for the Local Self-financing Degree Sector of the Research Grants Council of the University Grants Committee (UGC). She is also a member of the Quality Assurance Council of the UGC in Hong Kong. Additionally, she is a specialist appointed by the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications and serves as the Subject Chair of Business and Economics on the Scopus Content Selection and Advisory Board.

Professor Jian YANG

inaugural Director of the Macquarie University Data Horizons Research Centre and the Founding and Deputy Director of the Applied AI Research Centre at Macquarie University

Professor Jian Yang is the inaugural Director of the Macquarie University Data Horizons Research Centre and the Founding and Deputy Director of the Applied AI Research Centre at Macquarie University. Currently, she is also the Director of the Industry PhD Program at the Australian Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC).

She has published over 300 articles mainly in top data science and AI venues such as TKDE, TNNIS, VLDBJ, KDD, VLDB, ICDE, IJCAI, NeurIPS, WebConf, and more, winning various best paper awards. She has been leading the research centres, focusing on cross-disciplinary and translational research, and has successfully attracted an average of $3M per year in industry funding since 2019.

Professor Laurence T. YANG

Academic Vice-President and Dean of School of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Zhengzhou University, China

Professor Laurence T. Yang got his BE in Computer Science and Technology and BSc in Applied Physics both from Tsinghua University, China and Ph.D in Computer Science from University of Victoria, Canada. He is the Academic Vice-President and Dean of School of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Zhengzhou University, China. His research includes Cyber-Physical-Social Intelligence. He has published 400+ papers in the above area on top IEEE/ACM Transactions with total citations of 41840 and H-index of 102 including 8 and 44 papers as top 0.1% and top 1% highly cited ESI papers, respectively.

His recent honors and awards include the member of Academia Europaea, the Academy of Europe (2021), the John B. Stirling Medal (2021) from Engineering Institute of Canada, IEEE Sensor Council Technical Achievement Award (2020), IEEE Canada C. C. Gotlieb Computer Medal (2020), Clarivate Analytics (Web of Science Group) Highly Cited Researcher (2019, 2020, 2022, 2023), Fellow of Institution of Engineering and Technology (2020), Fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (2020), Fellow of Engineering Institute of Canada (2019), Fellow of Canadian Academy of Engineering (2017), etc.

Professor Kwok-yin WONG

Vice President (Education)

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Kwok-yin Wong is Vice-President for Education, Patrick S.C. Poon endowed professor in applied chemistry, and chair professor of chemical technology at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). Professor Wong is responsible for planning and developing PolyU’s teaching and learning initiatives. He leads the development of curriculum, pedagogy, as well as institutional policies and plans for academic quality assurance and the pursuit of educational excellence. He also serves as director of the State Key Laboratory of Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery at PolyU. The laboratory research focuses on chemical synthesis, chemical biology, and drug discovery. Professor Wong is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry of the United Kingdom. In 2013, he received the Natural Science Award (second class) for his work on biosensor development from the Ministry of Education of the Chinese government.

Professor Qiangfu ZHAO

Professor

The University of Aizu, Japan

Dr. Qiangfu Zhao received the D. Eng. degree in Electronic Engineering from Tohoku University (TU, Japan) in 1988. He was an associate professor of TU from 1993 to 1995; associate professor at the University of Aizu (UoA, Japan) from 1995 to 1999; and tenure full professor of UoA since 1999. He is a foreign fellow of the Engineering Academy of Japan (EAJ). He served as the Vice President of UoA from 2020 to 2024. He also severed as the associate editors of IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics (Springer), and IEEE SMC Magazine. He is the founder and co-chair of the Technical Committee on Awareness Computing in IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society. He has published more than 200 referred journal and international conference papers related to system design, signal or image processing and recognition, neuro-computing, evolutionary computing, awareness computing, and machine learning.