Reflections on HKUST: Dr. Samuel Kwan Savors Opportunities to Learn and Grow
Dr. Samuel Kwan discusses the technological evolution at HKUST since the 1990s.
For Dr. Samuel KWAN, currently Chief Information Officer of the Information Technology Services Office (ITSO), his 35-year journey at HKUST has been more than just a lifelong career. He has also been truly blessed to witness—and help shape—significant chapters in Hong Kong’s technological evolution.
He first joined the University in 1990, during its infancy, at the provisional office in Tsim Sha Tsui. Dr. Kwan fondly recalled the founding days with vivid clarity.
“I joined HKUST under our founding President, Prof. Chia-Wei WOO, I worked in the Centre of Computing Services & Telecommunications (CCST), which was the forerunner of ITSO. Under the leadership of Dr. William Max IVEY, the first director of CCST, the earliest staff body consisted of 20-plus persons,” he said.
Those early years remain deeply memorable for him.
“It was an elite team. I felt fortunate to meet so many talents and learn from the best. We also had the opportunity to catch up with the latest wave of technology development at the time,” he said, with a hint of nostalgia.
As a new, technology-intensive institution, HKUST helped lead Hong Kong in advancing the adoption and everyday use of emerging technologies. Many now-familiar innovations—including email, the internet, the World Wide Web, and a completely networked campus—took root at HKUST before becoming everyday norms across the city.
Dr. Kwan also reflected on his earlier experience in industry.
“I worked at Hong Kong Telecom right before joining HKUST. Back then, when we issued a memo, we first drafted the message, then passed it to a typist to produce a formal memo before sending it out,” he said.
From its founding, the University relied on email to circulate information, pioneering its usage in Hong Kong in the early 1990s. This step greatly improved efficiency, as Dr. Kwan proudly noted.
Beyond the challenges of those early days, working at HKUST placed Dr. Kwan at the forefront of several pioneering computer technology initiatives, including the introduction of the internet and the World Wide Web. These breakthroughs are now taken for granted, but they were anything but ordinary back then.
“When Prof. Vincent SHEN, who was the Founding Head of the HKUST Computer Science Department, initiated the Hong Kong Supernet in 1993, we also provided support. He was, without doubt, a pioneer in introducing the internet into Hong Kong,” he said.
The Hong Kong Supernet later became the first licensed internet service provider (ISP) in Hong Kong. At the same time, Prof. Shen is now Professor Emeritus in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.
Dr. Kwan also witnessed the establishment of the Hong Kong office of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the University. W3C has played a key role in shaping the evolution of the World Wide Web, the backbone of today’s internet.
More recently, Dr. Kwan has been engaged in projects at HKUST aimed at enhancing AI computing power, thereby strengthening academic staff's research capabilities. This also brought back fond memories of supporting the Intel Paragon system, namely the first supercomputer at HKUST, in the early 90s.
Looking back with pride, Dr. Kwan encourages the new generation of staff to truly savor the privilege of working within a tertiary institution, where learning opportunities and the advantages of shared resources are available under one roof. Taking advantage of such an atmosphere, Dr. Kwan completed his Ph.D. in Information Systems at HKUST.
“To work in a university is to be blessed with an abundance of resources to learn and grow,” he emphasized.
If you have any stories and photos from the early 1990s, please get in touch with Edward Leung (edwardleung@ust.hk or 3469 3500).
