Dr. Elizabeth K.S. Law Endowed Professor in Data Science

Professor Ng’s research endeavours cover scientific computing, numerical algebra and imaging sciences. His research has a wide variety of applications, including in data science and bioinformatics. As an internationally distinguished scholar, Professor Ng has received numerous accolades for his accomplishments in the fields of computational and applied mathematics, machine learning, and data science. In 2017, he was elected as a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and was awarded the 12th Feng Kang Prize of Scientific Computing for his fundamental contributions to algorithms for structured linear systems and mathematical and computational methods in image processing. Professor Ng ranks among the top 1% of scholars in three subject fields: Mathematics, Computer Science, and Engineering, based on Essential Science Indicators. He was also recognised as one of the world’s top 2% most-cited scientists by Stanford University, was ranked #4 among the Best Mathematics Scientists in China, and ranked #58 among the Best Computer Science Scientists in China in the 3rd edition of Research.com.  

Professor Ng has made significant contributions to the world’s advancement and promotion of mathematics. He held the position of Vice-President of the Hong Kong Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and as Council Member of the China Society for Computational Mathematics. He served as the Secretary of the Hong Kong Mathematical Society from 1998 to 2006, and as the Secretary of the East Asia section of SIAM from 2005 to 2009. He was the host and Conference Co-Chair of the SIAM Conference on Imaging Science in 2014, and the SIAM Conference on Applied Linear Algebra in 2018, with both Conferences held at HKBU. This was the first time that SIAM Conferences were held in the same place in Asia outside the USA and Europe.  Both Conferences attracted the participation of several hundred researchers from overseas and Mainland China. Professor Ng also served as an organisation committee member of the SIAM Conference on Mathematics of Data Science in 2022.  

Professor Ng’s contributions to the community extend well beyond his academic achievements. He has served as a nominator for prestigious awards such as the Kyoto Prize, the Future Science Prize, the VinFuture Prize and the Fudan-Zhongzhi Science Award. He has also served on a prize jury of the Biennial French-German Mathematics in Imaging and as a contest committee member for the Feng Kang Prize, the ICIAM Maxwell Prize and the Early Career Data Mining Researcher Award. From 2019 to 2021, Professor Ng contributed as a member of the SIAM Major Award Committee.  

In addition, Professor Ng is actively involved in international applied mathematics academic activities. He has served on the editorial boards of more than 15 journals, including the Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics (Principal Editor), Software Impacts (Editor-in-Chief), SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, SIAM Journal on Imaging Sciences, Journal of Scientific Computing, Numerical Linear Algebra with Applications, and East Asian Journal on Applied Mathematics. He has delivered more than 150 invited talks locally and internationally, including plenary talks at the International Linear Algebra Society Conference, Foundations of Computational Mathematics, IEEE Conferences, the SIAM Conference on Imaging Science, the SIAM Conference on Applied Linear Algebra and the SIAM Conference Annual Meeting.