Professor Martin D.F. Wong was appointed as dean of the Faculty of Engineering with effect from 4 January 2019, serving for a term of five years. Professor Wong was also appointed as Choh-Ming Li Professor of Computer Science and Engineering.
Professor Wong obtained his BSc degree in Mathematics from the University of Toronto in 1979, and received his Master's degree in Mathematics (1981) and PhD in Computer Science (1987) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He was the Edward C. Jordan Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Executive Associate Dean of the College of Engineering at UIUC. Professor Wong is a world-renowned scholar in the area of Electronic Design Automation (EDA). A prolific author, he has published more than 450 refereed articles in top journals and at conferences. Professor Wong has graduated 50 PhD students, many of whom now hold leadership positions in industry and academia. His research interests include EDA, combinatorial optimization, graph algorithms, parallel processing, cloud computing and machine learning. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) in recognition of his contributions to the algorithmic aspects of EDA, and has won a number of prestigious awards from both organizations. He also received the Distinguished Alumni Educator Award in Computer Science at UIUC.
As Executive Associate Dean of the College of Engineering at UIUC, Professor Wong was the second highest ranking administrator in the College. He has accumulated rich administrative experiences in overseeing faculty hiring and promotion, academic programme review, financial and resource planning, international partnerships and industry engagement at one of the largest colleges of engineering in the United States. UIUC's College of Engineering has 10 academic departments, 420 tenure-track faculty and 12,000 students. Professor Wong oversaw a period of unprecedented growth at the College, including the successful recruitment of over 150 new faculty members in the last five years. He has also established numerous student exchange programmes with universities all over the world. Two major joint research and educational programmes recently established under Professor Wong's leadership are the ZJU-UIUC Institute, offering the UIUC Engineering curriculum at the International Campus of Zhejiang University (ZJU), and the Chinese-American Railway Transportation Joint Research Center at UIUC, in partnership with China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation.
Professor Wong remarked, "I am honoured to have been offered the position of dean of the Faculty of Engineering at CUHK – a world-class faculty with excellent teaching and research professionals and high-quality research facilities. The Faculty is well-recognized internationally for its excellence in engineering research. I am looking forward to working with a team of very talented colleagues to continue this excellent research and education that contributes to Hong Kong, China and the wider world."
In accordance with the guidelines and procedures for the search and appointment of faculty deans, the University formed a search committee to launch a worldwide search for the next dean of the Faculty of Engineering. Having thoroughly evaluated the nominations and applications received, the Search Committee recommended Professor Wong for the position. In line with CUHK's appointment procedures, Professor Wong met with teachers and students of the Faculty to exchange views on its future development, and the Council subsequently appointed him as Dean.
