Keynote Speakers

Bio: Professor Zhao Wei is an Academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences and an IEEE Fellow. He currently serves as Chair Professor, University Provost, Director of the University Academic Committee, and Dean of the Institute of Higher Education at Shenzhen University of Advanced Technology. Previously, he held positions including Rector of the University of Macau, Vice Chancellor of American University of Sharjah, Dean of the School of Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Director of the Computer and Network Systems Division at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), and Senior Associate Vice Chancellor of Texas A&M University.

Prof. Zhao has extensive experience across the broad domains of higher education and research administration. Among Chinese scholars who pursued their careers in the United States, Professor Zhao held one of the highest-ranking positions in both the U.S. federal government and American higher education institutions. In Hong Kong and Macau, he was the first mainland Chinese scholar to become a university rector through a global recruitment process. During his tenure as Head of the Department of Computer Science at Texas A&M University (1997–2001), the department's research funding quadrupled, and its undergraduate program rose to 17th place in national rankings. During his tenure as Rector of the University of Macau, the university was visited twice by Chinese national leaders, completed a new campus 20 times larger than the old one, and saw its world ranking soar from 2,000th to 270th.

Prof. Zhao has made remarkable contributions to advancing higher education and scientific research in China. In 2002, he initiated the "DragonStar Program" and served as its first Director. The DragonStar Program selects ten distinguished overseas Chinese professors from across the United States each year to return to China on a voluntary basis and teach graduate-level computer science courses. The program has received widespread acclaim, with feature reports by major media outlets including China Central Television (CCTV). In 2011, Professor Zhao was appointed by China's Ministry of Science and Technology as the Chief Scientist of the National Basic Research Program (973 Program) on the Internet of Things. In recognition of his outstanding achievements in science and education, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Chinese Association for Science and Technology (CAST-USA) and the Overseas Outstanding Contribution Award by the China Computer Federation (CCF).

Bio: Qing Li is currently a Chair Professor (Data Science) and the Head of the Department of Computing, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Formerly, he was the founding Director of the Multimedia software Engineering Research Centre (MERC), and a Professor at City University of Hong Kong where he worked in the Department of Computer Science from 1998 to 2018. Prior to these, he has also taught at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the Australian National University (Canberra, Australia). Prof. Li served as a consultant to Microsoft Research Asia (Beijing, China), Motorola Global Computing and Telecommunications Division (Tianjin Regional Operations Center), and the Division of Information Technology, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Australia. He has been an Adjunct Professor of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and the Wuhan University, and a Guest Professor of the Hunan University (Changsha, China) where he got his BEng. degree from the Department of Computer Science in 1982. He is also a Guest Professor (Software Technology) of the Zhejiang University (Hangzhou, China) — the leading university of the Zhejiang province where he was born.

Prof. Li has been actively involved in the research community by serving as an associate editor and reviewer for technical journals, and as an organizer/co-organizer of numerous international conferences. Some recent conferences in which he is playing or has played major roles include APWeb-WAIM'18, ICDM 2018, WISE2017, ICDSC2016, DASFAA2015, U-Media2014, ER2013, RecSys2013, NDBC2012, ICMR2012, CoopIS2011, WAIM2010, DASFAA2010, APWeb-WAIM'09, ER'08, WISE'07, ICWL'06, HSI'05, WAIM'04, IDEAS'03, VLDB'02, PAKDD'01, IFIP 2.6 Working Conference on Database Semantics (DS-9), IDS'00, and WISE'00. In addition, he served as a programme committee member for over fifty international conferences (including VLDB, ICDE, WWW, DASFAA, ER, CIKM, CAiSE, CoopIS, and FODO). He is currently a Fellow of IEEE and IET/IEE, a member of ACM-SIGMOD and IEEE Technical Committee on Data Engineering. He is the chairperson of the Hong Kong Web Society, and also served/is serving as an executive committee (EXCO) member of IEEE-Hong Kong Computer Chapter and ACM Hong Kong Chapter. In addition, he serves as a councilor of the Database Society of Chinese Computer Federation (CCF), a member of the Big Data Expert Committee of CCF, and is a Steering Committee member of DASFAA, ER, ICWL, UMEDIA, and WISE Society.