 President, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Professor Tony F Chan
Professor Tony F Chan assumed the presidency of HKUST on 1 September 2009. Prior to joining HKUST, Prof Chan was Assistant Director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in charge of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate, which is the largest directorate at NSF. In that position, he guided and managed research funding of about HK$10 billion a year in astronomy, physics, chemistry, mathematical science, material science, and multidisciplinary activities.
Professor Chan’s scientific background is in Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering. He received his BS and MS degrees in Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University. He pursued postdoctoral research at Caltech as Research Fellow, and taught Computer Science at Yale University before joining the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) as Professor of Mathematics in 1986. He was appointed Chair of the Department of Mathematics in 1997 and served as Dean of Physical Science from 2001 to 2006. He also holds honorary joint appointments with the University’s BioEngineering Department and the Computer Science Department.
Professor Chan was one of the principal investigators who made the successful proposal to the NSF to form the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) at UCLA. He served as IPAM’s Director from 2000 to 2001.
Professor Chan is an active member of many scientific societies, including Fellow of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) where he had served on both the Board of Trustees and the Council, as well as Member of the American Mathematical Society, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).
His current research interests include mathematical image processing and computer vision, Very Large-Scale Integration (VLSI) physical design and computational brain mapping. He has published over 200 refereed papers and is one of the most cited mathematicians. He has mentored over 25 PhD students and 15 postdoctoral fellows.
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