Director, Professor Zhi-Quan (Tom) LUO
Professor Zhi-Quan (Tom) Luo received his BSc degree in Applied Mathematics from Peking University, China, in 1984. In the same year, he was selected by a joint AMS-SIAM committee and the Ministry of Education of China for graduate study in the United States (S.S. Chern Program). Following a 12-month intensive training in English and Mathematics, he enrolled in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he received his PhD degree in Operations Research in 1989. From 1989 to 2003, he was on the faculty in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University, Canada where he eventually served as the department head and was awarded a Canada Research Chair (Tier I) in Information Processing. From 2003 to 2014, Professor Luo served as a full professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Minnesota and held ADC Chair in digital technology. Currently, Professor Luo serves as the Vice President (Academic) of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and concurrently the Director of Shenzhen Research Institute of Big Data and also the Director of CUHK(SZ)-Tencent AI Lab Joint Laboratory on Machine Intelligence.
Professor Luo received the 2010 Farkas Prize from the INFORMS Optimization Society for outstanding contributions to the field of optimization. In 2018, he was awarded the prize of Paul Y. Tseng Memorial Lectureship in Continuous Optimization. He also received three Best Paper Awards from the IEEE Signal Processing Society in 2004, 2009 and 2011 respectively, and a 2011 Best Paper Award from the EURASIP. Professor Luo is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). In 2014, he was elected to the Royal Society of Canada, the highest honor a Canadian scholar can achieve in the Arts, Humanities and Sciences. In 2021, He has been appointed as a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE).
Professor Luo’s research mainly addresses mathematical issues in information sciences, with particular focus on the design, analysis and applications of optimization algorithms. Professor Luo consults regularly with industry on topics related to signal processing and digital communication. Professor Luo was the semi-plenary speaker for the International Symposium on Mathematical Programming in 2003 and IEEE CDC conference in 2011, the distinguished lecturer for the IEEE Sensor Array and Multichannel Signal Processing Workshop in 2006, the plenary speaker for the IEEE Signal Processing Advance for Wireless Communications (SPAWC) Workshop in 2013, and IEEE Signal Processing Theory and Methods Workshop in 2014. Professor Luo has served as Chair of the IEEE Signal Processing Society Technical Committee on Signal Processing for Communications (SPCOM). He was Editor in Chief for IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing from 2012 to 2014 and served as the Associate Editor for many internationally recognized journals, including Mathematics of Operations Research, Management Science, Mathematical Programming and others.
Executive Director Dr. Ping LEE
Dr. Ping Lee received his dual undergraduate degree in mathematics and computer science from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1984, and a master's degree in computer science and doctorate in mathematics from Cornell University in 1987 and 1990, respectively.
Dr. Ping Lee has 30 years of experience in the oil and gas industry and the information technology industry. He has extensive experience in operations management, strategy planning and implementation, and market development, and has a proven track record of driving business performance and value creation. Dr. Ping Lee has a keen sense of business and professional science background. He has served as the regional and global executive in many multinational companies, such as General Manager of Schlumberger Shenma Asia Pacific Financial Industry and Managing Director of Schlumberger Asia Pacific, President of French Atos Origin North Asia, Global Human Resources Director of Schlumberger Logging, Global Vice President and President of China Region of Schlumberger, President and General Manager of Exploration and Development of British Gas China, Chief Representative of Royal Dutch Shell BG China, and Senior Vice President of NextDecade Corporation of the United States. During this time, he has provided customers from energy, finance, telecommunications, government affairs, and other sectors with comprehensive industry and technology solutions covering geological research, oil and gas exploration and development, banking and telecommunications core systems, industrial manufacturing, control systems, and enterprise resource management businesses. As the only system integrator, he was also honored to lead the early construction project of the overall information system integration of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
Dr. Ping Lee has 10 years of experience in scientific research. He worked as a research scientist, senior research scientist, and principal research scientist in Schlumberger Computer Science Laboratory and Schlumberger-Doll Research (SDR), and has published more than 20 papers and obtained a US patent.
Vice Director, Professor X.Q. CAI
Professor Cai received his PhD from Tsinghua University in 1988. After conducting postdoctoral researches at the University of Cambridge and the Queen's University of Belfast, UK, from 1989 to 1991, he was appointed as Lecturer in Applied Mathematics at the University of Western Australia during 1991-1993. He joined The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in 1993, holding academic positions of Lecturer (1993-1996), Senior Lecturer (1996-2000), and full Professor (2000-2014), at the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management (SEEM). He served as Chairman of SEEM during 1996-2003, Head of Graduate Division of SEEM during 2009-2012, and founding Dean of General Education of Lee Woo Sing College during 2010-2014. He joined CUHK-Shenzhen in 2014 as Dean of the School of Science and Engineering (2014-17), and has been appointed as Associate Vice President since 2016, and Presidential Chair Professor since 2018. Professor Cai’s research interests are mainly in industrial and systems engineering, operations research, and logistics and supply chain management science. He has published over 300 papers in academic journals, books, and conferences, including more than 100 papers in leading journals, such as Operations Research, Management Science, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, Naval Research Logistics, Production and Operations Management, IIE Transactions, IEEE Transactions, Transportation Science, and Transportation Research. He was the chair/co-chair for several international conferences, and a member of the organizing committee/program committee/advisory committee for numerous international conferences. He has been an editor/associate editor/editorial board member of several academic journals. Professor Cai is a recipient of the Outstanding Young Scientist award (overseas category) from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the IEOM Award of Outstanding Professor in Logistics and Supply Chain. He is Academician of the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences, Fellow of the Hong Kong Institute of Engineers, and Fellow of Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA).
Vice Director, Tiegen YU
Comrade Yu Tiegen, with a bachelor's degree, a senior engineer, and a registered bidding specialist. Comrade Yu started working in July 1985 and joined the Communist Party of China in April 1985. He currently holds the position of Vice Director at the Shenzhen Research Institute of Big Data and serves as the Secretary of the Communist Party branch of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) Big Data Research Institute.
Comrade Yu Tiegen previously served as the Party Secretary and Chairman of Jiangxi Provincial Consultation and Investment Group Co., Ltd. In 2016 and 2017, he was consecutively awarded the title of "Outstanding Entrepreneur of Jiangxi Province" by the Jiangxi Provincial Enterprise Federation. In 2018 and 2019, and then again in 2020 and 2021, he was twice honored with the title of "Outstanding Entrepreneur of the New Era in Jiangxi" by the Jiangxi Provincial Enterprise Federation. In 2020, he was also awarded the honorary title of "Model Worker of Jiangxi Province" by the Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee and Government.
Vice Director, Doctor CHANG Eric Hsin
Dr. CHANG Eric Hsin received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Electronic Engineering from Fudan University in 1997 and 2000, respectively. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut in 2005 and conducted postdoctoral research at Princeton University from 2005 to 2006.
Dr. Chang has accumulated extensive experience in technology research and development, business management, and more, with 18 years of experience in AI R&D, industrial incubation, and operations management. From 2006 to 2023, he held various senior positions, including Senior Researcher at the United Technologies Research Center, Senior Engineer in Machine Learning and Computer Vision at NVIDIA, Senior Director/Senior Chief Research Engineer at Huawei US Research Center, Vice Director of the Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for society , and Chief AI Scientist at Huawei GTS. Between 2010 and 2014, he co-founded two computer vision startups, serving as Chief Technology Officer. Since October 2023, he has been the Vice Dean in charge of commercialization at the Shenzhen Research Institute of Big Data.
Chief Scientist, Professor Haizhou LI
Professor Haizhou Li is the X.Q. Deng Presidential Chair Professor in the School of Data Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the National University of Singapore, Singapore and a Bremen Excellence Chair Professor at the University of Bremen, Germany. Prior to joining CUHK (Shenzhen), Professor Li has taught at Nanyang Technological University and National University of Singapore (2006-2016) in Singapore, University of Eastern Finland (2009) in Finland, and University of New South Wales (2011-2016) in Australia. He was the Principal Scientist and Research Director at the Institute for Infocomm Research (2003-2016), the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore. Professor Li is an IEEE Fellow, and ISCA Fellow.
Professor Li has served as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE-ACM Transactions on Audio Speech and Language Processing (2015-2018), Associate Editor of Computer Speech and Language (2012-2021), Springer International Journal of Social Robotics (2008-2021), and a Member of IEEE Speech and Language Processing Technical Committee (2013-2015), Awards Board (2021-2023), and Publications Board (2015-2018) of IEEE Signal Processing Society. He was the President of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA, 2015-2017), the President of Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association (APSIPA, 2015-2016), the President of the Asian Federation of Natural Language Processing (AFNLP, 2017-2018). He was the General Chair of major scientific conferences including ACL 2012, INTERSPEECH 2014, and ICASSP 2022.
Professor Li was known for his technical contributions to the theory and practice of speaker and language recognition, and to a number of award-winning speech products, such as Apple's Chinese Dictation Kits for Macintosh (1996) and Lernout & Hauspie's Speech-Pen-Keyboard Text Entry Solution for Asian languages (1999). He was the architect of a series of major technology deployments that include TELEFIQS voice-automated call centre service in Singapore Changi International Airport (2001), voiceprint engine for Lenovo A586 Smartphone (2012), and Baidu Music Search (2013).
