Dean of Engineering and Chair Professors Elected Fellows of Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences
Dean of Engineering Prof. Tim CHENG, New Bright Professor of Engineering Prof. Khaled B. LETAIEF, and Tencent Professor of Engineering Prof. ZHANG Qian were elected 2020 Fellows of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences (HKAES).
HKAES is an organization of Hong Kong’s most eminent engineers of various disciplines who are recognized leaders of the profession with distinguished achievements in engineering sciences or applications. The fellowship is characterized by dedication to serving Hong Kong, the Mainland China and the region with top-quality engineering expertise. All are elected by their peers for personal achievements of exceptional merit and distinction. A total of six Fellows were newly elected in 2020.
An internationally leading researcher with excellent experience in fostering cross-disciplinary research collaboration, Prof. Tim Cheng is a world authority in the field of VLSI testing and design verification, as well as an impactful contributor across a wide range of research areas including design automation of electronic and photonic systems, mobile computer vision, and learning-based multimedia computing.
He joined HKUST as the Dean of Engineering in 2016 and is concurrently a Chair Professor jointly in the Departments of Electronic & Computer Engineering and Computer Science & Engineering.
Prior to this, he spent more than two decades at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he took up various important academic leadership roles, such as Founding Director of the Computer Engineering Program (1999-2002), Chair of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (2005-2008), Acting Associate Vice-Chancellor for Research (2013) and Associate Vice-Chancellor for Research (2014-2016).
He has published more than 400 technical papers, co-authored five books, held 12 US patents, and transferred several of his inventions into successful commercial products. He is a Fellow of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and his works are of high impact with due recognition from the field, including most recently Taiwan’s Pan Wen Yuan Foundation Award for Outstanding Research in 2020.
Prof. Khaled B. Letaief, Chair Professor of Electronic and Computer Engineering, is an internationally recognized leader in wireless communications and networks with research interest in artificial intelligence, big data analytics systems, mobile cloud and edge computing, tactile Internet, 5G systems and beyond.
He joined HKUST in 1993 and had served in many high-level administrative positions, including Dean of Engineering (2009-2015) and Head of Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering (2003-2009) at HKUST, and Provost of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (2015-2018) in Qatar. He also took leadership roles in professional societies, such as President of the IEEE Communications Society (2018-2019), the world’s leading organization for communications professionals, and Founding Editor-in-Chief (2002-2006) of the well-regarded IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.
In his research areas, he has over 640 papers with over 37,500 citations and an h-index of 88. He also has 15 patents, including 11 US inventions. A Fellow of IEEE and HKIE, he has recently added to his long list of accolades with Tunisia’s national award for the Best Tunisian Researcher or Inventor Abroad in 2020.
Prof. Zhang Qian joined HKUST in 2005 and is currently a Chair Professor of Computer Science and Engineering. She is also a Co-Director of Huawei-HKUST Innovation Lab and the Director of Digital Life Research Center of HKUST. Her research interests include Internet of Things (IoT), smart health, mobile computing and sensing, wireless networking, as well as cyber security.
She has published more than 400 refereed papers in international leading journals and key conferences in her fields and is the inventor of more than 50 granted and 20 pending international patents. She has served as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing since January 2020.
Prof. Zhang has received many awards and honors since her early career, including IEEE Fellow (2011), MIT TR100 (MIT Technology Review) world’s top young innovator award (2004), Best Asia Pacific Young Researcher Award by IEEE Communications Society (2004), and a number of best paper awards in top conferences. She held the Changjiang Chair Professor title in Huazhong University of Science and Technology from 2012 to 2015.