Two World-class Scientists Join Lingnan University

On August 23, Lingnan University held the president’s reception as part of its new staff orientation programme. At the reception, Professor S. Joe Qin, President Designate and Acting President, announced that effective from 1 September 2023, two world-renowned scientists, i.e., Professor KWONG Sam Tak Wu and Professor CHEN Xi, will join Lingnan University.

Professor KWONG Sam Tak Wu will be appointed by Lingnan University as Chair Professor of Computational Intelligence, and concurrently as Associate Vice-President (Strategic Research). 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. He is currently Chair Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Computer Science at the City University of Hong Kong. Professor Kwong was listed as one of the top 2% of the world’s most cited scientists, according to the Stanford University report. He was listed as one of the top 1% of the world’s most cited scientists by Clarivate in 2022. 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. Professor Kwong has a prolific publication record with over 350 journal articles, and 160 conference paperswith an h-index of 76 based on Google Scholar. He is currently the associate editor of a number of leading IEEE transaction journals.

Professor CHEN Xi will be appointed as Chair Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, and concurrently as Dean of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies. Professor Chen is an internationally acknowledged leading scholar in material science and mechanics who addresses real-world challenges in energy, environment, nanotechnology, and biology. As one of the international leaders who pioneered distributed carbon dioxide capture, utilization and preservation, Professor Chen received the Sia Nemat-Nasser Early Career Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in 2010, Young Investigator Medal from the Society of Engineering Science (SES) in 2011, and the Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award from ASME in 2012. He was awarded the Career Award (CAREER) by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).  Professor Chen was elected as a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in 2014.  Professor Chen graduated from the Xi'an Jiaotong University Young Gifted Program. He obtained his Master in Science from Tsinghua University and PhD degree in Solid Mechanics from Harvard University. He was a tenured Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering from 2017 to 2022 and the Director of the Earth Engineering Center from 2018 to 2022 at Columbia University. He had been Distinguished Professor at the Institute of Advanced Structure Technology at Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), and had recently served as Director of the Institute of Energy and Chemical Engineering Shaanxi. 

Lingnan University warmly welcomes the two world-class scientists to promote research in data science, artificial intelligence, nature sciences, and interdisciplinary studies for its transition toward a world-leading research-oriented liberal university. We are also delighted to announce that our new staff who came from world-leading universities including Oxford University, Harvard University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, Yale University, Columbia University, Pennsylvania University, Tsinghua University, University of Toronto, the National University of Singapore, etc.