Founding Members

Professor Tony Chan Fan-cheong is a computer scientist and mathematician. He assumed his role as the 3rd President of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) from 1 September 2018 to 1 September 2024. Before that, he was the President of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) from September 2009 to August 2018. Under his leadership, HKUST’s global visibility and recognition significantly increased, with wide international media coverage, strategic partnerships established with world-renowned institutions, and invitations to global platforms such as the World Economic Forum in Davos. The University’s global ranking also improved consistently.

He has served on many boards and advisory committees of universities and other organizations around the world, including currently the boards of trustees of Yidan Prize (HK), Future Investment Institute (KSA), Skoltech (Russia), and international advisory boards/committees of RIKEN (Japan), KAIST (Korea), SUSTech (China), Westlake University (China), and American Univeristy of Sharjah (UAE).

From 2006-2009, he was Assistant Director of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), which is the largest directorate at NSF. In that position, he guided and managed research funding in astronomy, physics, chemistry, mathematical science, material science, and multidisciplinary activities.

He was appointed as Chair of the Department of Mathematics in 1997 and served as Dean of Physical Sciences from 2001 to 2006 at the University of California, Los Angeles. He also holds honorary joint appointments with the University’s BioEngineering Department and the Computer Science Department.
He 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.

He was listed as an ISI Highly Cited Author in Mathematics by the ISI Web of Knowledge, Thomson Scientific Company. He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Engineering, an IEEE Fellow, a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He served on the editorial boards of many journals in mathematics and computing, including SIAM Review, SIAM Journal of Scientific Computing, and the Asian Journal of Mathematics, and is one of the three Editors-in-Chief of Numerische Mathematik. He co-wrote the proposal to start a new SIAM Journal of Imaging Sciences and served on its inaugural editorial board until 2012.

Website of Prof Tony Chan at King Abdullah University of Science of Technology

May 2025