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The Council of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) has approved the appointment of Professor Martin D.F. Wong as Dean of the Faculty of Engineering with effect from 4 January 2019. He will serve for a term of 5 years. Professor Wong is also appointed as Choh-Ming Li Professor of Computer Science and Engineering.

Professor Martin D.F. Wong obtained his B.Sc. degree in Mathematics from the University of Toronto in 1979, and received his Master’s degree in Mathematics in 1981 and Ph.D. degree in Computer Science in 1987 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He is currently 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 scholar, he has published over 450 refereed articles at top journals and conferences. Professor Wong has graduated 50 Ph.D. students and many of them now holds leadership position in industry and academia.  His research interests include EDA, combinatorial optimisation, 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) for his contributions to the algorithmic aspects of EDA, and he has won a number of prestigious awards from ACM and IEEE. He has also been given the Distinguished Alumni Educator Award in Computer Science at UIUC. 

As Executive Associate Dean of the College of Engineering at UIUC, Professor Wong is the second highest rank administrator in the College. He has accumulated rich administrative experiences in overseeing faculty hiring and promotion, academic program review, financial and resource planning, international partnership and industry engagement at one of the largest College of Engineering in the United States. College of Engineering at UIUC has 10 academic departments, 420 tenure-track faculty and 12,000 students. Professor Wong oversees a period of unprecedented growth of the College with successful recruitment of over 150 new faculty members in the past 5 years. He has also established numerous student exchange programs with universities all over the world. Two major joint research and educational programs recently established under Professor Wong’s leadership are the ZJU-UIUC Institute offering 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 (CRRC). 

Professor Wong remarked, “I am honoured to have been offered the position as 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 has been well recognised internationally for its excellence in engineering research. I am looking forward to working with a team of very talented colleagues for continued excellence in research and education that contribute to Hong Kong, China and the 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 considered the nominations/applications received, the Search Committee finally recommended Professor Wong for the position. Pursuant to the appointment procedures, Professor Wong met with teachers and students of the Faculty of Engineering earlier to exchange views on the future development of the Faculty and the Council subsequently appointed him as Dean of the Faculty of Engineering.