Victor O.K. Li

Victor O.K. Li was born and raised in Hong Kong. He joined the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, California, USA in February 1981, and became Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the USC Communication Sciences Institute. Since September 1997 he has been with the University of Hong Kong (HKU), Hong Kong, where he is Chair Professor of Information Engineering, and Cheng Yu-Tung Professor in Sustainable Development (Mar 2017 - June 2023). He served as Head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering from 2012 to 2018, and Assoc. Dean of Engineering at HKU from 2007 to 2012. He was the first Managing Director of Versitech Ltd. (http://www.versitech.hku.hk/), the technology transfer and commercial arm of HKU, and is now serving on the board of Sunevison Holdings Ltd, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The co-author of seven US patents licensed for commercial exploitation, he is very active in technology transfer. He is the Chairman of the Board and Co-Founder, with his PhD student, of Fano Labs (www.fano.ai), an award-winning AI Automatic Speech Recognition and Natural Language Processing Company. He served as the Convenor of the Strategic Research Theme of Information Technology at HKU, and as Co-Director of the Area of Excellence in Information Technology funded by the Hong Kong government. He is the Chair of the Executive Committee, HKU Initiative on Clean Energy and Environment, an interdisciplinary research project with researchers from Engineering, Science, Architecture, and Social Science. With colleague Dr. Jacqueline CK Lam, he established the HKU-Cambridge Clean Energy and Environment Research Platform, the HKU-Cambridge AI to Advance Well-being and Society Research Platform, and the HKU-Cambridge AI for Neuro-disease Research Platform. The research focus is the development of AI technologies to solve important societal problems, or AI for Social Good. In Jan 2018, the team co-led by Dr. Jacqueline CK Lam and Prof. Victor OK Li was awarded a USD 6.3M RGC Theme-based Research Project to develop deep learning techniques for personalized and smart air pollution monitoring and health management. More recently, the team was awarded, consecutively in 2021, 2022 and 2023, the US National Academy of Medicine Healthy Longevity Catalyst Award. Sought by government, industry, and academic organizations, Prof. Li has lectured and consulted extensively around the world. He is a Fellow of the HK Academy of Engineering Sciences, the IEEE, the HKIE, and a UK Royal Academy of Engineering Senior Visiting Fellow.

AI for Social Good; development and applications of artificial intelligence technologies to important societal problems, including clean energy and environment, medicine and health, and smart city.