Prof. Xiangen Hu
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China
Prof. Xiangen Hu began his academic journey in applied mathematics, earning his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 1982 and 1985, respectively. He then moved to the United States to further his education, obtaining a Master's in social sciences in 1991 and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology in 1993. Before his current position as a chair professor in learning sciences and technologies at PolyU, Prof. Hu held several positions. He was a professor in the Departments of Psychology, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Computer Science at The University of Memphis (UofM) for 30 years, where he also worked as a senior researcher at the Institute for Intelligent Systems (IIS). His leadership roles included serving as a professor and Dean of the School of Psychology at Central China Normal University (CCNU), leading the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Partnership Laboratory at UofM, and working as a senior researcher at the Key Laboratory of Adolescent Cyberpsychology and Behavior, backed by the Chinese Ministry of Education. Prof. Hu's research focuses on four key areas: developing mathematical models to decode human cognitive behavior, specializing in research design and statistical analysis particularly for categorical data using general processing tree models, delving into artificial intelligence for knowledge representation, creating computerized tutoring systems, and enhancing distributed learning technologies. His work has attracted significant funding from prestigious bodies like the US National Science Foundation, the US Institute of Education Sciences, the Advanced Distributed Learning initiative of the US Department of Defense, the US Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity, the US Army Research Laboratories, and the US Office of Naval Research. As the lead principal investigator, Prof. Hu has managed projects with over $10 million in funding, and as a co-principal investigator, he has been involved in projects amassing more than $30 million in grants.
Prof. Jun Liu
Xi’an Jiaotong University, China
Prof. Jun Liu is a professor of computer science at Xi’an Jiaotong University (XJTU). He is the director of XJTU - Lenovo Smart Industries Joint Lab (2022~). Prior to this, he was the director of Shaanxi Province Key Lab of Big Data Knowledge Engineering (2012~2023). He is a senior visiting scholar of Stanford University and an IEEE senior member. He is the lead principal investigator of many projects such as the National Key R&D Program of China, the National High-tech R&D Program of China (863 Program), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). He is broadly interested in the fields of natural language processing, computer vision, and smart education, with a particular emphasis on diagram understanding, question answering, and large language model (LLM). His academic contributions include two published monographs and 20 granted invention patents. In addition, he has authored over 100 research papers in various esteemed journals and conference proceedings, such as IJCV, IEEE TPAMI, IEEE TKDE, KDD, and CVPR. He currently serves on the editorial boards of IEEE TNNLS, and has served as a guest editor for many technical journals, such as Information Fusion and ACM TOMM. He also acted as a conference/workshop/track chair at numerous conferences. He has won the best paper awards in IEEE ISSRE 2016 and IEEE ICBK 2018. He won numerous awards, including the State Science and Technology Progress Award (2nd class), the State Teaching Achievement Award (2nd class), Google Faculty Award, Excellent Supervisor Award for Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation of Shaanxi Province, and Wang Kuancheng Education Award.
Professor Dragan Gasevic
Monash University, Australia
Distinguished Professor of Learning Analytics in the Faculty of Information Technology; and Director of the Centre for Learning Analytics (CoLAM)
Dragan Gašević is Distinguished Professor of Learning Analytics in the Faculty of Information Technology and the Director of the Centre for Learning Analytics (CoLAM) at Monash University. His research interests in learning analytics center around the development of computational and design methods that can advance understanding of self-regulated and collaborative learning. Previously, he was a Professor and the Sir Tim O’Shea Chair in Learning Analytics and Informatics (Feb 2015–Feb 2018) in the Moray House School of Education and the School of Informatics and Co-Director of Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh. He was the Canada Research Chair in Semantic and Learning Technologies and Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at Athabasca University (Jan 2007–Jan 2015). He is a founder and served as the President (2015–2017) of the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR), the world’s leading research and professional organization in learning analytics. He has held several honorary professorships and industry fellowships in Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. He served as a founding program chair of the International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge (LAK) in 2011 and 2012, the general chair in 2016, a founding program co-chair of the Learning Analytics Summer Institute (LASI) in 2013 and 2014, and a founding editor of the Journal of Learning Analytics (2012–2017) and Computers & Education: Artificial Intelligence (2020–present). In 2019–2022, he was recognized as the national field leader in educational technology in The Australian – the only Australian daily newspaper distributed nationally. He led the EU-funded SHEILA project that received the Best Research Project of the Year Award (2019) from the Association for Learning Technology. In 2022, he received the Lifetime Member Award, the highest distinction of the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR) and named a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world’s largest computing society.
Professor KONG, Siu Cheung (江紹祥教授)
Education University of Hong Kong, China
Research Chair Professor of E-Learning and Digital Competency at the Department of Mathematics and Information Technology; and Director of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Competency Education Centre
Professor Kong Siu-cheung currently is Research
Chair Professor of E-Learning and Digital Competency
at the Department of Mathematics and Information
Technology (MIT); and Director of Artificial
Intelligence and Digital Competency Education Centre
(AIDCED), the Education University of Hong Kong.
Professor Kong holds a doctorate from the Department
of Computer Science of the City University of Hong
Kong. He has produced over 270 academic publications
in the areas of computational thinking education,
STEM education, artificial intelligence literacy
education, metaverse literacy education, flipped
classroom strategy, teacher development, mathematics
education, and policy on digital technology in
education. He has completed/conducted 85 research
projects since joining the University (the then Hong
Kong Institute of Education).
Professor Kong is at present serving as the
Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Research
and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning (RPTEL)
and Journal of
Computers in Education (JCE). He was in the
President of the Asia-Pacific Society for Computers
in Education (APSCE) in 2014 and 2015; and is
serving as the President of the Global Chinese
Society for Computers in Education (GCSCE) from July
2023 to June 2025.
Professor Kong was the Convener of International
Research Networks (IRNs), World Educational Research
Association (WERA) (December 2012 to December 2015:
Theory and Practice of Pedagogical Design for
Learning in Digital Classrooms; May 2019 to April
2022: Computational Thinking Education in Primary
and Secondary Schools). Professor Kong is on the
list of Stanford Top 2% Scientist in Education in
2019 (single-year data), in 2020, 2021 and 2022
(single-year data & career-long data). He was the
winner of 2019-2020 HKSAR University Grants Council
Teaching Award (Team Award). He was also the winner
of National Teaching Award 2022 – Higher Education
(Undergraduate) – Tier-Two Award – Team Award of
PRC. He won The Education University of Hong Kong
President’s Awards for Outstanding Performance in
Knowledge Transfer (Team Award) in 2020 and
Outstanding Performance in Administration (Team
Award) in 2021.
Professor Kong is leading an international project
on promoting computational thinking development and
coding education for eight years starting from 2016.
He is also leading a three-phase project on
Artificial Intelligence Literacy and Applied
Artificial Intelligence Programmes for secondary
students, university students, teachers, and
administrative staff in Hong Kong from 2020 to 2025.
Prof. Minhong(Maggie) Wang
The University of Hong Kong, China
Dr. Minhong (Maggie) Wang is Professor and Director of the Laboratory for Knowledge Management & E-Learning in the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong (HKU, ranked World Number One for Education and Educational Research by U.S. News & World Report in the 2022-2023 Best Global Universities subject rankings). She is also Eastern Scholar Chair Professor at East China Normal University and Visiting Research Professor at the Advanced Innovation Center for Future Education of Beijing Normal University. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Knowledge Management & E-Learning (indexed in Scopus & ESCI). Her research focus is on learning technologies for cognitive development, creative thinking and complex problem solving, knowledge management and visualization, and artificial intelligence applications. She has published more than 200 items including one monograph and 117 journal articles (73 in SSCI/SCI indexed journals; 48 in Q1 and 18 in Q2 journals) among others. She is recognized as ESI Top 1% Scholar in (a) Social Sciences, General, and (b) Economics & Business.
More details can be found at http://web.edu.hku.hk/staff/academic/magwang.