Ting-Chuen PONG

Biography

Prof. Ting Chuen Pong has been appointed as Vice-President for Administration and Business of HKUST (GZ) effective from 8 July 2024.

Prof. Pong joined the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (HKUST) in 1991, where he is currently an Emeritus Professor of Computer Science and Engineering. Prior to his appointment as VPAB of HKUST (GZ), Prof Pong was the Vice-President for Administration and Business (VPAB) of HKUST from 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2024. He was the Acting Provost in 2019, Senior Advisor to the Provost (Teaching Innovation and E-learning) from 2013 to 2021, Associate Vice-President for Academic Affairs (Postgraduate Studies & Academic Research) from 2002 to 2010, and Associate Dean of Engineering from 1999 to 2002. He was also Acting Director of the Center for Education Innovation from 2019 to 2021 and Director of the Center for Engineering Education Innovation from 2015 to 2018. Before joining HKUST, he was an Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA.

Prof. Pong is currently a member of the Research Assessment Exercise Group of the University Grants Committee (UGC). He served as an Academic Research Advisor for the UGC from 2010 to 2012. He is currently also serving as a member of the Committee on Self-financing Post-secondary Education (CSPE) of the Education Bureau and Chair of the Sub-committee on Quality Assurance of the CSPE. He was a member of the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications (HKCAAVQ) and Chair of the Qualifications and Accreditation Committee in HKCAAVQ from 2014 to 2020.

Apart from being an experienced academic administrator, Prof. Pong has been leading various projects in e-learning, including the Hong Kong Massive Open Online Courses (HKMOOC) platform for Hong Kong's Tertiary Education Sector project funded by the UGC Teaching and Learning Funding Scheme. He has also led the efforts for HKUST to become the first University in Asia to join both Coursera and edX, and launched MOOCs in 2013.

Prof. Pong received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1984. Prof. Pong is a recipient of the Pattern Recognition Society Award in 1990 and the HKUST Excellence in Teaching Innovation Award in 2001. In 2014, he led the HKUST team in the Wharton-QS Stars Awards Competition and was selected as Winner of the Natural Sciences Award and Runner-up of the Hybrid Learning Award.