Professor Ting Chuen PONG is the Vice-President for Administration and Business of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) (HKUST(GZ)). Before joining HKUST(GZ), Professor PONG served as the Vice-President for Administration and Business and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at HKUST. Professor PONG joined The Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (HKUST) in 1991. He served as 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.
Professor 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, Professor 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.
Professor PONG received his B.S degree in Mathematics & Physics from the University of Wisconsin in 1978 and obtained his M.S and PhD degrees in Computer Science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1981 and 1984 respectively. Professor 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.