Prof Tan's current professional interests lie in the research and development of practical e-business technologies and solutions most relevant to the Greater China region. He is very active in promoting the adoption of e-business technologies and practices in the business and academic communities. Under his leadership, ETI has successfully developed many leading edge e-business technologies and solutions, and has conducted many consulting services for public and private enterprises, including SMEs, in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta region.

Before taking up the helm at ETI in September 1999, Prof Tan served as Senior Manager at IBM Research for Application Systems, responsible for managing e-business application-related research activities. In 1997, he led the IBM Deep Blue team in an historic match against the world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Prof Tan's main research dealt with the architecture and machine design for high performance computing systems, and later, the application of these systems for e-business solutions. This research resulted in the highly successful launch of the IBM parallel computer, the RS/6000 SP.

Prof Tan is actively sought after as an advisor by many international technical and academic institutions. He serves as the Managing Director of ETI Consulting Limited (ETIC); and as Adjunct Professor at Chongqing University, China Central University of Science and Technology, and Harbin Institute of Science and Technology; and as Guest Professor at Zhejiang University. He also serves on the management boards of the E-technology Research Center of Shanghai Jiaotong University and CEPBA-IBM Research Institute (CIRI) at Polytechnic University of Catalunya, Barcelona in Spain. In addition, he serves as the Consulting Expert to the Shanghai City Science and Technology Commission on the Shanghai City Grid project.

Prof Tan is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences. He was also a founding Council Member of the IBM Deep Computing Institute.

Prof Tan received his BSEE degree from Seattle University in 1963 and his Doctor of Engineering Science degree from Columbia University, New York, New York, in 1969.

Mr. Edward Wong

Mr. Edward Wong Chor-Cheung is the Assistant Director in charge of Strategy, Planning and Technology Transfer at the E-Business Technology Institute (ETI) of the University of Hong Kong. Mr. Wong also serves as the Senior Vice-President of Business Development of ETI Consulting Limited (ETIC), the commercial arm of ETI. Mr. Wong is an expert on executive management, having more than 30 years' experience with IBM.

Before joining ETI in October 2004, Mr. Wong was the Program Director at IBM, responsible for the external validation of the company's future on-demand and autonomic computing projects. Previously, he was assigned to China, where he was responsible for developing and executing the IBM GCG Partnership strategy to collaborate with Chinese IT Partners to develop the Chinese market by utilizing IBM's complete product portfolio, skills and technology. He helped establish the RS/6000 manufacturing facility in Shanghai as the Program Director of Partnership Technical Support of the Greater China Group. Mr. Wong also served as the Director of the IBM GCG Technology, Development, Manufacturing Partnership Program; the General Manager of the Chinese Speech Business Unit; and the General Manager of Engineering Technology Company (ETC), an IBM China wholly-owned subsidiary in Shanghai.

Mr. Wong became a corporate staff at IBM in 1997 and had been involved in the development of the company's Worldwide Industry Solution Business, and management of the worldwide Industry Solutions development and investment portfolio.

He joined the IBM Data Product Division in 1974 and, through the years, held various technical, managerial and executive positions in software, hardware development laboratories, corporate functions and The IBM Greater China Group. Recognized as an expert in EDFI (Error Detection and Fault Isolation), Fault Tolerance and System RAS (Reliability, Availability and Serviceability) design, he was the chief RAS Engineer in the 1990s, responsible for the RAS requirements for IBM 3090, 9021 and the CMOS G3 Mainframe system families.

Mr. Wong was a Visiting Instructor of the Electrical Engineering Department of Columbia University in 1981, and the Adjunct Professor of the Computer Science Department of Marist College from 1983 to 1994, during which he helped establish the Graduate program in Software Design and Development.

Mr. Wong received a BA in Mathematics from Fordham University in 1973; and obtained his BSEE and MSEE in 1974 and the Computer Systems Engineering degree in 1980 from Columbia University.

Mr. Wong has been a Senior Member of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE) since 1985 and was the chair of the Professional Activities Committee for Engineers (PACE) Divisional Activities Committee (PDAC) in 1998 and 1999. He served in the IEEE Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology Award Committee from 2002 to 2004. Moreover, he was elected to the "Men of Achievement" in 1985 and is included in many international "Who's Who" and Honor societies.

Dr. Frank Tong

Dr. Frank C. H. Tong is the Assistant Director of the E-Business Technology Institute of the University of Hong Kong. He is also the Director of the Supply Chain Management Technology Laboratory of the Institute by which he heads up the technology research and innovation on the RFID applications and solutions.

His area of interest includes wireless security, RFID technologies, mobile computing in e-business applications as well as the web-based and grid computing technologies for service provision and integration. Frank is in the research and development of application-oriented technologies as well as the transfer of developed technologies to the industry and end-users. He is responsible for the consulting service offerings, and is also involved in the education and training commitments of the Institute. He has earned major government grants, published in international journals and conferences, generated industrial patents and developed products.

Over the past few years, Frank has led his team to develop and commercialize the technologies of wireless public-key security. Last year, Frank's team launched a mobile messaging service platform and transferred it to an ASP business. Presently, Frank extends his expertise to the area of RFID and supply chain management. With the current HKSAR ITF funding award, he is focused on introducing the RFID technology to the PRD region.  

Dr Huang is an Assistant Director at the E-Business Technology Institute (ETI), a Principal Consultant at ETI Consulting Limited (ETIC) and an Honorary Professor at the Department of Mathematics of the University of Hong Kong (HKU). Dr Huang has been involved in a number of research projects at ETI, serving as the Principal Investigator for the project, "A Knowledge-Based Business Intelligence Platform", and as the Deputy Coordinator for the project, "Intelligent Classification Technologies for Email Data in Chinese and Mixed Languages". Dr Huang is also a Co-Principal Investigator in two national 863 projects on business intelligence and Grid Computing in Mainland China.

Before joining ETI, Dr Huang worked as a Senior Consultant at MIP Australia; principal consultant at Clementine in Australia and New Zealand; and Education coordinator at Microstrategy in Asia. Dr Huang helped several Australian companies successfully implement numerous solutions. In particular, he worked as a consultant on a number of world-class business intelligence software products, including the data mining system Clementine (SPSS), the leading Relational OLAP system Microstrategy (Microstrategy) and the data extraction tool DataStage (Ardent).

Dr Huang acquired many years of experience in databases and data mining research at the Commonwealth Science and Industry Research Organization (CISRO) in Australia. He also worked as a data mining research staff at the Cooperative Research Centre of the Advanced Computational Systems (ACSys) in the Australian National University. While working in ACSys, Dr Huang developed new data clustering algorithms, which have been accepted and used in a number of research organisations and companies around the world.

Moreover, Dr Huang has written more than 50 research papers, which have been published in international conferences and journals, such as the "Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining", and "IEEE Transactions". He is frequently invited to give speeches on data mining, business intelligence and CRM at industrial seminars and forums in the Asia Pacific region.

Dr Huang received his PhD degree from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.

Mr Kwok is a Senior Manager at the E-Business Technology Institute (ETI). He is currently responsible for managing the e-Business Platform and Infrastructure R&D team, and his area of interest includes Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Grid, and Logistics & Supply Chain Management enabling technologies, such as Sense and Respond systems, RFID, and EPC.

Over the past years, he has generated many innovative and practical research ideas. His concepts of comprehensive web payment and knowledge-based business intelligence platform have evolved into HK$25-million government-funded projects.

Mr Kwok has solid experience as a software and network engineer, having participated in various projects in Hong Kong, including the Hong Kong Airport project and the Airport Railway project.

Mr Kwok is a veteran entrepreneur with exposure to both technical and business issues in technology start-up environments. He is the chief technology officer and co-founder of eCyberPay.com, the first online micro-payment company in Hong Kong.

Mr Kwok holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego.