Six HKUST Professors Elected Prestigious IEEE Fellows The Highest Share in Asia for 2012

2011-12-13

Six professors from the School of Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) were recently elected 2012 Fellows of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), bringing the total number of IEEE Fellows at HKUST to 25 which is equivalent to 29% of the total number of IEEE fellows in Hong Kong. HKUST will have the highest number of newly elevated IEEE Fellows among universities and institutions in Asia.

Prof Khaled Ben Letaief, Dean of Engineering said: "We are very proud to see that HKUST Engineering continues to excel on a global scale. Our outstanding achievements demonstrate the excellence of our world-class faculty members and their significant research impacts. This further testifies to our School's ranking No. 1 in Greater China and consistently within the top 30 in the world. We shall continue to work hard to further develop HKUST as a global center of excellence in research and education which attracts top-quality faculty and students worldwide."

Fellowship of IEEE is the highest grade of membership and is recognized by the technical community as a distinction reserved for select IEEE members whose extraordinary accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. The total number of IEEE Fellows selected in any one year cannot exceed one-tenth of one-percent of the total voting membership. For the 2012 session, Hong Kong welcomes 14 new IEEE Fellows and six of them are from HKUST. With the newly elevated Fellows, HKUST has been ranking top with a total of 25 IEEE Fellows, including 18 from the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, six from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and one from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The University boasts more new IEEE Fellows than countries like Korea, Singapore, Australia and countries in Europe.

The six newly elevated IEEE Fellows at HKUST are:

Prof Oscar Au, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, was cited for his contributions to multimedia coding and security. He received his BASc from University of Toronto in 1986, his MA and PhD from Princeton University in 1988 and 1991 respectively. After being a postdoctoral researcher in Princeton University for one year, he joined HKUST as an Assistant Professor in 1992. He has published about 320 technical journals and conference papers. His fast motion estimation algorithms were accepted into the ISO/IEC 14496-7 MPEG-4 international video coding standard and the China AVS-M standard, holding eight US patents on his signal processing techniques. He has performed forensic investigation and stood as an expert witness in the Hong Kong courts many times. He is a Board of Governor member of the Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association (APSIPA) and Associate Editor of various IEEE Transactions.

Prof Roger Cheng, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, was elected for his contributions to multiuser communications in wireless systems. He received his BS from Drexel University, Philadelphia in 1987, and both MA and PhD degrees from Princeton University in 1988 and 1991 respectively, all in Electrical Engineering. He was an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of University of Colorado at Boulder. He also held visiting positions with Qualcomm, San Diego, and with Institute for Telecommunication Sciences, NTIA, Boulder, Colorado. He was the recipient of the Meitec Junior Fellowship Award from the Meitec Corporation in Japan, the George Van Ness Lothrop Fellowship from the School of Engineering and Applied Science in Princeton University, and the Research Initiation Award from the US National Science Foundation.

Prof Vincent Lau, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, was recognized for his contributions to wireless communication systems with channel feedback. He obtained his BEng (First Class Honors) in EEE from University of Hong Kong, and completed his PhD in the University of Cambridge in two years under the support of Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fellowship and Croucher Foundation Scholarship. He had worked at the Hong Kong Telecom (currently PCCW) and the Lucent Technologies - Bell labs. He joined HKUST's Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering as Associate Professor in 2004 and was promoted to full professor in 2010. He has been the technology advisor and consultant for ASTRI, ZTE, Huawei etc, and has founded the Huawei HKUST Innovation Laboratory. He has published over 200 papers in IEEE Transactions and IEEE conferences. He also holds 28 US patents on various advanced wireless technlogies. He has received three best IEEE paper awards and he is the key contributor of four IEEE 802.22 (cognitive radio) specifications.

Prof Johnny Sin, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, was cited for his contributions to the design and commercialization of power semiconductor devices. He received his BASc, MASc and PhD degrees, all in Electrical Engineering, from University of Toronto in Canada. He joined Philips Laboratories, New York, US, upon the completion of his PhD studies, and was a senior member of the research staff. He joined HKUST in 1991 and was one of the founding members of the Department. He was awarded the Teaching Excellence Appreciation Award by the School of Engineering. He is the Director of the Nanoelectronics Fabrication Facility and the Semiconductor Product Analysis and Design Enhancement ( SPADE) Center. He is the holder of 12 patents, and has published over 250 papers in technical journals and refereed conferences. His power semiconductor devices design has been widely used in home appliances, portable electronic products, mobiles and automotive equipment.

Prof Danny Tsang, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, was elected for his contributions to the optimization of communications networks. He received his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Pennsylvania. He first joined the Department of Computing Science at Dalhousie University and later the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering at HKUST as Assistant Professor. He served as Associate Editor for the OSA Journal of Optical Networking and Guest Editors for the IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications and the IEEE Systems Journal. He is currently a Technical Editor for the IEEE Communications Magazine. He also served as the General Chairs of IFIP Broadband Communications'99 and ICST AccessNets'09. He received the Outstanding Paper from Academe Award at the IEEE ATM Workshop'99. During his leave from HKUST in 2000 / 2001, Prof Tsang assumed the role of Principal Architect at Sycamore Networks in the US and invented the 64B/65B encoding that has now been adopted by International Telecommunication Union (ITU)'s Generic Framing Procedure recommendation GFP-T (ITU-T G.7041/Y.1303). Prof Tsang has been awarded with three US patents and one Chinese patent.

Prof Qian Zhang, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, was honored for her contributions to the mobility and spectrum management of wireless networks and mobile communications. She received BS, MS and PhD degrees from Wuhan University, China, all in computer science. Joining HKUST in 2005, she also serves as the co-director of Huawei-HKUST Innovation Laboratory and the HKUST Director of Digital Life Research Center. She has published more than 200 refereed papers. She is the inventor of about 30 international patents. She has received MIT Technology Review world's Top Young Innovator Award, the Best Asia Pacific Young Researcher Award elected by IEEE Communication Society, the Best Paper Award in Multimedia Technical Committee of IEEE Communication Society and Best Paper Awards for QShine, IEEE Globecom, IEEE ICDCS, and IEEE ICC. She received the Overseas Young Investigator Award from the National Natural Science Foundation of China. She was also elected as IEEE Communication Society Distinguished Lecturer from Jan 2010 to Dec 2011. Prof Zhang will also be presented the Chinese Young Scientists Award by the China Association for Science and Technology in mid-December 2011.

The IEEE is the world's leading professional association for advancing technology for humanity. Through its 395,000 members in more than 160 countries, the association is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics. It publishes 30% of the world's literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields, and has developed more than 900 active industry standards.

Contacts﹕

Prof Oscar Au