Prof 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. Prof 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. Prof 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.
| Types | Person, Academic |
| Gender | Male |