Distinguished Professors and Academic Leaders

From an OLED that transformed the global display industry, to an experiment that pinned down a neutrino mixing angle, to an Institute for Advanced Study that lured a Nobel laureate to teach full-time — in just over three decades, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has built its reputation on a single formula: first-rate professors produce first-rate students. The strategy was written into the University's DNA by its founding Vice-Chancellor, Woo Chia-wei (see the dedicated biography of the founding president^※). This article profiles the representative professors who have won major awards, been elected to academies, or left a significant mark on their fields, organised by school and research area.

Academy memberships, named chairs, and major awards are cited against official sources where possible. Where figures overlap with other articles on this site, we provide only a summary and link to the full profile.

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# How many academicians does HKUST have? A quick overview

Ask about HKUST's academic weight and the most direct answer is the roster of academy members. The table below shows the principal academies represented by the professors covered in this article, for easy comparison — many of these scholars hold multiple national academy memberships.

Note: Tang, Zhang and Li were all serving as Chair Professors at HKUST when elected; the first two have since moved to mainland Chinese institutions (see below). Academy memberships of former and current Vice-Chancellors are covered in the article on top scholars^※.

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# I. School of Science

# 1.1 Kam-Biu Luk (陸錦標) — particle physics

Current post: Chair Professor of Physics (IAS Paul C W Chu Professor); Director of the Center for Fundamental Physics (since 2021)

Research: neutrino oscillation experiments. In 2003^※, Luk initiated and co-led the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, serving as co-spokesperson alongside Wang Yifang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of High Energy Physics. The experiment deployed eight identical antineutrino detectors in three underground halls adjacent to the Daya Bay nuclear power plant complex, detecting electron antineutrinos from six reactors; the collaboration comprised some 250 scientists from 39 institutions^※, making it one of the largest neutrino experiments in the world. On 8 March 2012, the collaboration announced the first measurement showing that the neutrino mixing angle θ₁₃ is non-zero (sin²2θ₁₃ = 0.092)^※ — the last and smallest of the three neutrino mixing angles to be pinned down precisely, opening the door for subsequent studies of the neutrino mass ordering and CP violation (which may explain the asymmetry between matter and antimatter in the universe). The result earned the 2016 State Natural Science Award (First Class) and is regarded as a milestone in early-21st-century neutrino physics.

Major honours:

The Daya Bay collaboration also shared the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics^※, awarded to the international collaboration as a whole; Luk, as co-spokesperson, was one of its core representatives.

# 1.2 Ben Zhong Tang (唐本忠) — father of Aggregation-Induced Emission (AIE)

Former post: Chair Professor of Chemistry (joined 1994; moved to the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen's School of Science and Engineering in 2021)

Research: luminescent materials. Conventional fluorescent dyes suffer from "quenching" — their emission dims as concentration rises and molecules aggregate — a persistent headache for display and bioimaging applications. In 2001, Tang observed at HKUST a class of molecules that instead emit more strongly in the aggregated state, and from this coined the original concept of "Aggregation-Induced Emission" (AIE)^※, turning "the more aggregated, the brighter" into a designable materials principle. By Tang's own account, AIE materials have since been widely applied in chemical and biological sensing, optoelectronic devices, cancer diagnosis and therapy, and nanomedicine delivery^※.

Honours: elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2009; the related work won the First-Class State Natural Science Award in 2017, making him the first HKUST scholar to receive that honour^※. The AIE concept has since been pursued by thousands of research groups across dozens of countries, with cumulative citations in the tens of thousands — one of the best-known scientific concepts to originate in China and travel the world. Although Tang has since moved to a mainland institution, the fact that "AIE was born at HKUST" remains the most recognisable landmark achievement of the University's chemistry discipline.

# 1.3 Mingjie Zhang (張明杰) — molecular neuroscience

Former post: Chair Professor of Life Science (Kerry Holdings Professor); Senior Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study (at HKUST 1995–2020)

Research: structure and biochemistry of synaptic signal transduction complexes. Zhang's group discovered that proteins in the postsynaptic density can self-assemble, via phase separation, into highly condensed signalling networks^※, establishing a new research paradigm for synapse biology. Phase separation (liquid–liquid phase separation) has become one of the hottest topics in cell biology in recent years, and Zhang was among the first to systematically introduce the mechanism into synapse research. The work has potential implications for diagnosing and early intervention in psychiatric disorders, including stroke and hereditary deaf-blindness syndromes.

Honours and move: elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011^※, and a founding member of the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences. In December 2020, he became the founding Dean of the School of Life Sciences at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen^※ — part of the same two-way flow of talent between universities in the Greater Bay Area that brought Kam-Biu Luk back from Berkeley, and has seen several HKUST chair professors head north to Shenzhen in recent years.

# 1.4 Jian-shu Li (勵建書) — representation theory of Lie groups and number theory

Current post: Chair Professor of Mathematics (concurrently Dean of the Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics at Zhejiang University)

Research: infinite-dimensional representations of Lie groups and automorphic forms — a core area of pure mathematics connecting symmetry with number theory. Elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Mathematics and Physics Division), the first Hong Kong scholar to enter that division^※, which at the time also lifted HKUST's total CAS membership. Though the mathematics department is less "showy" than some of its siblings, it is a critical pillar of the School of Science.

# 1.5 Nancy Ip (葉玉如) — neuroscience (see also "Top Scholars")

Current post: Morningside Chair Professor of Life Science (concurrently the fifth Vice-Chancellor and President, since 2022)

Ip is both HKUST's sitting president and the core scholar of its life-science research. She joined the University in 1993^※ and has since published more than 330 papers^※ on neurotrophic factors and drug development for Alzheimer's disease. Her academy memberships, her record as the first female CAS member from Hong Kong, and her major awards are detailed in the article on top scholars^※.

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# II. School of Engineering

The School of Engineering is where HKUST's academy members are most densely packed, spanning OLEDs, wireless communications, robotics, energy storage, AI, and more. The profiles below are organised by individual.

# 2.1 Ching W. Tang (唐景荣) — father of the OLED

Current post: IAS Bank of East Asia Professor (jointly appointed across Electronic and Computer Engineering, Chemistry, and Physics)

Tang earned his PhD in physical chemistry from Cornell University in 1975^※ and spent over three decades at Kodak Research Laboratories, where in 1987 he invented the high-efficiency organic light-emitting diode (OLED) — the physics that underpins today's smartphone screens and flexible displays. He is the first ethnic-Chinese winner of the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2011)^※ and the first ethnic-Chinese recipient of the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology (2019). He joined HKUST in 2013^※. For his full biography, technical breakthroughs, and complete list of honours, see the dedicated profile^※.

# 2.2 Kei-May Lau (廖桂美) — photonics and electronics

Current post: Professor Emerita, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering; founder of the Photonics Technology Center (2000)

Research: integration of III–V compound semiconductors on silicon for photonics and electronics; micro-LED displays and AR/VR applications; and the use of metal-organic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) to realise high-performance III–V devices on silicon substrates. This "heterogeneous integration" is seen as a key path to next-generation displays and optical interconnects, and micro-LEDs are widely regarded in industry as the most promising display technology after OLED — an arc that connects neatly with colleague Ching W. Tang's OLED work, giving HKUST two successive generations of display-materials leadership. Elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2024^※, the only Hong Kong scholar newly elected that year. She is also an IEEE Fellow^※, an Optica Fellow^※, and a fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences^※.

# 2.3 Khaled Ben Letaief (貝雷特尔) — wireless communications

Current post: New Bright Professor of Engineering, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering (at HKUST since 1993); former Dean of Engineering

Research: OFDM, MIMO, cooperative communications, and high-spectral-efficiency systems — technologies that are the core of 4G cellular networks^※ and the foundation for 5G/6G. He has published more than 630 journal and conference papers^※, holds 15 patents^※ (including 11 US invention patents^※), and has made six technical contributions to IEEE standards^※. He is a former president of the IEEE Communications Society^※, one of very few Asian scholars to have held the society's highest office. Elected an International Member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 2021^※.

# 2.4 Zexiang Li (李澤湘) — robotics and entrepreneurship

Current post: Colin Lam Ko Yin Professor of Engineering, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering

Research: robotics, automation, and control of unmanned systems. In 2019, Li and his alumnus Frank Wang jointly received the IEEE Robotics and Automation Award^※ — a rare case of mentor and student being recognised on the same stage. Li is perhaps best known as a mentor of hard-tech entrepreneurship: he co-founded Googol Technology, DJI, and ePropulsion^※, and drove the XbotPark robotics business incubator at Songshan Lake, building a pipeline from laboratory to mass production. (The story of his student Frank Wang and DJI is told in the Frank Wang biography^※; the full entrepreneurial lineage is mapped in the article on notable alumni^※.) In 2020, he was named one of 40 model innovators and entrepreneurs marking the 40th anniversary of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone^※.

# 2.5 Yike Guo (郭毅可) — data science and Provost

Current post: Provost of HKUST; Chair Professor jointly appointed in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering

Research: data science, artificial intelligence, and big-data analytics, with a long track record in large-scale data analysis platforms and AI applications. He previously taught at Imperial College London, where he founded its Data Science Institute. Elected a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2025^※, the latest addition to HKUST's CAE roster. As Provost, he oversees all teaching and learning across the University and has been a key driver of curricular and research adjustments in the era of generative AI.

# 2.6 Tianshou Zhao (趙天壽) — electrochemical energy storage

Current post: Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Research: electrochemical energy storage and fuel-cell technology, focusing on long-duration storage routes such as flow batteries — a direction whose industrial importance grows as renewable energy is connected to the grid at scale and intermittency must be smoothed. Elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for his contributions in this area^※, one of HKUST's newer academicians in energy engineering.

# 2.7 Tongyi Zhang (張統一) — multi-field coupled mechanics

Former post: Chair Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering (since departed)

Research: hydrogen embrittlement, fracture failure of multi-field coupled materials, and micro/nano-mechanics. Elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011^※, in the same cohort as Mingjie Zhang and Ping Cheng — a bumper year for HKUST academy elections.

# 2.8 Ping Cheng (鄭平) — heat transfer engineering

Current post: Professor Emeritus, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Research: heat transfer in porous media, radiative heat transfer, and microscale heat transfer — a senior figure in the field. Elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011^※.

# 2.9 More honoured engineering professors: the 2022 Faculty Recognition Ceremony

Academicians are only the tip of the pyramid. The depth of the School of Engineering shows in the steady stream of international awards won by mid-career and senior professors across many subfields. HKUST's fourth Faculty Recognition Ceremony in 2022 honoured thirteen engineering faculty members in a single sitting^※, with awards drawn from the US, UK, France, and international professional societies. The list gives a useful cross-section:

Note: Also honoured at the same ceremony were Qi-Ming Shao (IEEE Magnetics Society Young Achiever Award), Qing Chen, Fei Sun, Anthony Leung, Rhea Liem, Raymond Wong, and others — thirteen in total. Shyy, who also served as HKUST's fourth Vice-Chancellor, is covered in the article on top scholars^※.

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# III. Business School

# 3.1 Christopher Pissarides — labour economics, Nobel laureate

Current post: Chair Professor, HKUST Institute for Advanced Study (the University's first full-time Nobel laureate faculty member)

Sir Christopher Pissarides is Professor Emeritus at the London School of Economics, specialising in labour market economics and search-friction theory. In 2010 he shared the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Dale Mortensen and Peter Diamond^※, awarded for their contributions to the theory of search and matching in labour markets — a framework that explains why job vacancies can coexist with high unemployment. He is also a signature of HKUST's approach to bringing world-class academic networks onto campus: in 2025 the University conferred on him an honorary doctorate of social science^※. In recent years his research has turned to the impact of AI on employment and wage structures. For the wider portrait of Nobel, Turing, and Fields laureates hosted at the HKUST Institute for Advanced Study, see the article on honorary doctors, honorary fellows, and visiting professors^※.

# 3.2 Albert Park — development and labour economics

Current post: Head and Chair Professor, Department of Economics; Chair Professor of Social Science; Director of the Institute for Emerging Market Studies (IEMS)^※

Research: China's economic development, poverty and inequality, labour migration and employment, health and education, and the economics of population ageing^※. An internationally recognised development economist working on China, Park has taught at the University of Michigan and Oxford and advised the World Bank on multiple occasions. In recent years he has continued to publish steadily in top economics journals on firm performance, poverty and inequality, migration and employment, and health and education. The Institute for Emerging Market Studies (IEMS)^※, which he heads, is an important think-tank platform in the Business School for China and emerging-economy issues, connecting academic research with policy concerns. Beyond economics, Park also holds a Chair Professorship in Social Science and serves as Professor of Public Policy, spanning several of the University's units — a reminder of the intersections among the Business School, the School of Humanities and Social Science, and public policy.

# 3.3 The Business School's finance and economics chair professors

The Business School has recruited a number of chair professors in finance and economics in recent years. Head and Chair Professor of Finance Dong Lou also serves as Associate Dean of the Business School (Strategic Planning and Research), and holds the Citigroup Professorship in Business and Management as well as the directorship of the Center for Financial Research^※. Chair Professor of Finance Chu Zhang concurrently directs the Center for Investment Research^※; Chair Professor Yingying Li works on asymptotic statistics, financial econometrics, financial risk management, and high-frequency data analysis^※. The economics department's research spans economic theory, econometrics, macroeconomics, and applied fields including trade, industrial organisation, development economics, labour economics, health economics, and environmental economics.

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# IV. Computer science and ACM Fellows

In 2025^※, no fewer than four HKUST scholars were elected ACM Fellows — the Association for Computing Machinery elects fewer than one percent of its members each year, and having four from a single institution in a single year is rare among Asian universities.

# 4.1 Tim Cheng (鄭光廷) — design automation and Vice-President

Tim Cheng is Vice-President for Research and Development at HKUST, holding a joint Chair Professorship between Electronic and Computer Engineering and Computer Science and Engineering^※. His research spans electronic design automation and hardware-software co-design, and has extended in recent years to energy-efficient accelerator architectures for AI edge inference, predictive vision models for medical image analysis, and multimodal health applications. He has received the ACM SIGDA Pioneering Achievement Award^※, the Pan Wen-Yuan Outstanding Research Award, the China Computer Federation Overseas Outstanding Contribution Award, and over a dozen best-paper awards at major conferences and journals — a rare dual leader in research governance and frontier computing. As the Vice-President overseeing research, he has also been a key driver of large interdisciplinary platforms such as the AI Chip Center for Emerging Smart Systems (ACCESS).

# 4.2 Hui Xiong (熊輝) — data mining across two campuses

Hui Xiong is Chair Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Associate Vice-President (Knowledge Transfer) at HKUST(GZ), the University's Guangzhou campus^※. He holds fellowships from ACM, AAAI, AAAS, IEEE, and the China Computer Federation, and is an ACM Distinguished Scientist. His research focuses on AI and data mining, spanning spatiotemporal data, talent and organisational intelligence, point-of-interest recommendation, and he leads several national key R&D programmes. His election also reflects the growing research weight of the Guangzhou campus in AI and data science under the University's "one HKUST, two campuses" structure.

# 4.3 Ke Yi (易柯) — database theory and query processing

Yi was elected an ACM Fellow for contributions to the theory and practice of query processing^※, with research spanning database theory and systems, query processing, data security and privacy, parallel and distributed algorithms, and data streams. He has long held senior roles in the field's international academic organisations, including programme committee chairs at PODS (Symposium on Principles of Database Systems) and ICDT (International Conference on Database Theory) — a representative scholar who combines theory and engineering. With four fellows elected in the same year, HKUST's computer science now has an ACM Fellow anchoring each of its four main research lines: data, vision, AI, and chip design.

# 4.4 Jiaya Jia (賈佳亞) — computer vision and generative AI

Current post: Chair Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering; Director of the von Neumann Institute

Research: computer vision, multimodal AI, generative methods, and vision-language models. Over a research career spanning more than two decades, he has published more than 200 top-conference and journal papers^※ with over 100,000 citations^※ and an H-index above 120^※. In 2025 he was elected an ACM Fellow and an IEEE Fellow, and has received two SIGGRAPH Asia Test-of-Time Awards (2023 and 2024)^※ — the "test of time" honour recognises papers whose influence has deepened over the years, and winning it in consecutive years is a rare feat.

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# V. Academy memberships and named chairs: how HKUST's talent system works

That HKUST has assembled a line-up like this in just over three decades owes much to its talent institutions. Understanding the system helps make sense of the string of "Chair Professor" titles above.

# 5.1 What is a Named Professorship?

A Named Professorship is the highest rank of chair, named for a donor or distinguished scholar. Usually endowed, it is awarded to the University's most eminent academics and signals both scholarly standing and institutional investment. According to the HKUST named professorship page^※, several chair professors covered in this article hold such posts:

• Morningside Chair Professor of Life Science: Nancy Ip (currently Vice-Chancellor and President)
• Kerry Holdings Professor of Science: formerly held by Mingjie Zhang (who subsequently moved to SUSTech)
• IAS Paul C W Chu Professor of Physics: Kam-Biu Luk
• New Bright Professor of Engineering: Khaled Ben Letaief
• Colin Lam Ko Yin Professor of Engineering: Zexiang Li
• IAS Bank of East Asia Professor: Ching W. Tang

# 5.2 The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS): bringing world-class networks to campus

Several academician-level scholars — Luk, Zhang, Pissarides, and Tang — also hold Senior Fellow or chair positions at the Institute for Advanced Study. The IAS is HKUST's platform for engaging with the global community of top scholarship: it has brought a Nobel laureate like Pissarides to teach full-time, routinely invites international masters for visits and lectures, and gathers the University's strongest researchers under one interdisciplinary roof as Senior Fellows. For a young university best known for engineering and business, the IAS is a key instrument for punching above its weight in basic research reputation. Its honorary network and conferral mechanisms are described in the article on honorary doctors, honorary fellows, and visiting professors^※.

# 5.3 Talent flows in and out

It is worth noting that the figures above include both scholars who returned to Hong Kong (Kam-Biu Luk, who came from Berkeley) and academicians who have moved from HKUST to mainland institutions (Mingjie Zhang to SUSTech, Ben Zhong Tang to CUHK-Shenzhen). This two-way flow between universities in the Greater Bay Area is an objective facet of the deepening interaction between Hong Kong and mainland higher education; this article records it neutrally, without commentary.

According to HKUST's own account, by the time Jian-shu Li was elected in 2013, the University's total of CAS members had reached six^※. Since then, with the elections of Zhao Tianshou and others, plus continued additions to the US National Academy of Sciences, the US National Academy of Engineering, and the ACM rolls, the roster has kept growing. For a university that only began teaching in 1991, that pace of accumulation is unusual.

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# VI. Frequently asked questions

Does a Nobel laureate teach at HKUST?

Yes. Labour economist Sir Christopher Pissarides, the 2010 Nobel laureate in economic sciences^※, is a Chair Professor at the HKUST Institute for Advanced Study — the University's first full-time Nobel laureate faculty member. Other Nobel, Turing, and Fields laureates visit mostly in honorary or visiting capacities; see the article on honorary doctors, honorary fellows, and visiting professors^※.

Who is called the "father of the OLED"?

Ching W. Tang. He invented the high-efficiency organic light-emitting diode at Kodak in 1987^※, laying the foundation for today's OLED display technology, and joined HKUST in 2013. His full biography is in the dedicated profile^※.

Is DJI founder Frank Wang's teacher a HKUST professor?

Yes. Robotics scholar Zexiang Li was Wang's supervisor at HKUST, and the two jointly received the IEEE Robotics and Automation Award in 2019^※. Li co-founded DJI and has nurtured an entire lineage of hard-tech ventures; see the Frank Wang biography^※.

Is the current Vice-Chancellor herself a scientist?

Yes. The fifth Vice-Chancellor and President, Nancy Ip, is a neuroscientist who joined HKUST in 1993 and has long worked on neurotrophic factors and Alzheimer's disease drug research. Her academic achievements are detailed in the article on top scholars^※.

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# Further reading

• Top Scholars^※ — academic achievements of academicians, chair professors, and former Vice-Chancellors
• Honorary Doctors, Honorary Fellows & Visiting Professors^※ — Nobel, Turing, and Fields laureates at HKUST
• OLED pioneer Ching W. Tang and the Kyoto Prize^※ — dedicated profile
• Frank Wang and DJI^※ and Notable Alumni^※ — extensions of the Zexiang Li entrepreneurial lineage

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