Prof. Benjamin W. Wah
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow

Benjamin W. Wah is the Franklin W. Woeltge Endowed Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Professor of the Coordinated Science Laboratory of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia University in 1974 and 1975, respectively, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, CA, in 1975 and 1979, respectively. Previously, he had served on the faculty of Purdue University (1979-85), as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation (1988-89), as Fujitsu Visiting Chair Professor of Intelligence Engineering, University of Tokyo (1992), and as McKay Visiting Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley (1994). Wah is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 1989, he was awarded a University Scholar of the University of Illinois; in 1998, he received the IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award; in 2000, the IEEE Millennium Medal; and in 2003, the Raymond T. Yeh Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Design and Process Science. He has published over 250 papers, two authored books, and three edited books. As an individual researcher, Wah has made fundamental contributions to nonlinear optimization. He has developed the mathematical foundation and the algorithms for solving large-scale discrete, continuous, and mixed constrained optimization problems whose functions are not necessarily in closed form. These problems exist in many engineering fields, including production planning, scheduling, system design, artificial intelligence, control systems, semiconductor manufacturing, and operations research. Based on a key observation that the constraints in many of these application problems are highly structured and involve variables with strong spatial or temporal locality, he has developed the mathematical foundation for partitioning large-scale application problems by their constraints into a small number of much simpler subproblems. Because each subproblem has only a fraction of the original constraints, it is a significant relaxation of the original problem and has an exponentially lower complexity. As a result, his approach can efficiently solve many problems that are intractable to existing solvers. His research provides the key technology for reducing the complexity of large-scale problems in spacecraft and satellite planning. Its success has been demonstrated in SGPlan, a planner that won the First Place Award in the 4th International Planning Competition in 2004. It has also been shown in CPOpt, a nonlinear programming solver that can solve many large-scale continuous and mixed integer optimization problems that cannot be solved by some of the best solvers today. As a volunteer leader, Wah has made numerous contributions in promoting the computing profession. During his service as the IEEE Computer Society President in 2001, he was instrumental in launching many initiatives. One of his many accomplishments was to provide continuing education for computer professionals worldwide. Under his leadership, the IEEE Computer Society launched a distance learning program that offers hundreds of free online courses for its members. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering between 1993 and 1996. He had chaired a number of international conferences and was the International Program Committee Chair of the IFIP World Congress in 2000. He currently serves as the Society’s representative to the Computing Research Association.

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Prof. Jianli Jiao
South China Normal University, China

Dr. JIAO Jianli is Professor of Educational Technology and Director of the Future Education Research Center (FERC) at the School of Information Technology in Education (SITE), South China Normal University (SCNU), Guangzhou, China. Dr. Jiao is a pioneer in teaching and learning with educational technologies in mainland China. He has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in educational technologies, instructional system design, and Social Networking System in Education, and facilitated professional development programs for in-service teachers and faculty. Dr. Jiao’s research interests span educational technology, blended and online learning, technology-enhanced learning in K12, higher education, and technology-enhanced teachers’ professional education, as well as minimalism Educational Technologies.
Dr. Jiao has published extensively on digital teaching, learning and assessment in K-12 schools and higher and professional education. His current work focuses on Technology-enhanced teachers’ professional development, digital and social learning, Massive Open Online Courses, Online, Flipped Learning and Blended Learning as well as Teaching and Learning in 1:1 Settings. He is one of the most highly cited scholars in Mainland China in the field of education, especially in the field of educational technology. He listed as one of top 50 researchers (ranked No.20) by the National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) according to publication citation and reference index database of CNKI. He has extensive experience in working with in-service K-12 teachers in formal and informal learning contexts.
Dr. Jiao also has instructional design experience within corporate and higher education settings.

Prof. Zehui Zhan
South China Normal University, China

Zehui Zhan, Ph.D., Professor, Doctoral Supervisor in South China Normal University, Youth Pearl River Scholar, Hong Kong Scholar, PI of the Smart Educational Equipment Industry-University-Research Cooperation Base, 2013 Young Excellent Teacher in universities in Guangdong Province, 2020 Highly Cited Chinese Researcher (Education). Her Doctoral dissertation has been nominated as the national 100 excellent doctoral dissertations in China in 2012. She has got the annual award of youth excellent universities teacher from Fok Yingdong Education Foundation and Ministry of Education, the title of best teachers achieving highest teaching quality in SCNU, and the first prize of national educational software competition. Her research interest includes Learning Science, STEAM education, Smart education, and Entrepreneurial education.