Biography
Prof. Kwok (Ricky) received a B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Hong Kong in 1991, and the M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees, both in Computer Science, from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 1994 and 1997, respectively. Before returning to the University of Hong Kong as an Assistant Professor in August 1998, he was a Visiting Scholar for one year in the Parallel Processing Laboratory, the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University (West Lafayette, Indiana, USA), where he worked on a DARPA research project in the field of distributed heterogeneous computing. During his sabbatical leave year (from August 2004 to July 2005), Ricky worked as a Visiting Associate Professor in the Internet and Grid Computing Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering–Systems at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles, California, USA), where he conducted research on several interesting Internet security problems such as DDoS defense and traceback, worm containment and signature generation, etc. From July 2007 to May 2009, he also worked as an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Colorado State University (Fort Collins, Colorado, USA), where he taught courses and conducted research in the areas of wireless sensor networks, high performance computer architecture, reconfigurable computing systems, and heterogeneous computing.
Ricky’s research focus has been on designing efficient communication protocols and robust resources management algorithms toward enabling large scale distributed mobile computing. In these research areas, he has authored one textbook, co-authored another two textbooks, and published more than 200 technical papers in various leading journals, research books, and refereed international conference proceedings. He is a Senior member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Ricky is a Fellow of the HKIE, the IEEE, and the IET. He is also a member of the IEEE Computer Society and the IEEE Communications Society. From March 2006 to December 2011, Ricky served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing as a Subject Area Editor in Peer-to-Peer Computing. He also served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems from January 2013 to December 2016.
Ricky has been actively involved in various administrative tasks at the departmental, school, and university levels. He served as the Co-Director of the Computer Engineering Programme from 2000 to 2002. He then served as the Programme Director of the Master of Science in Electrical and Electronic Engineering programme from 2002 to 2007. Since 2002, he has also been serving as the Associate Programme Director of the Master of Science in Electronic Commerce and Internet Computing programme. He was the Director of the High Performance Computing Laboratory from 2000 to 2007. He was also elected to serve on the Head’s Advisory Committee (HAC) from 2000 to 2007. During 2010 to 2014, Ricky was the Chairman of the Departmental Curriculum Review and Development Committee (DCRDC), managing curriculum reform for smooth transition to four-year degree programmes. From 2012 to 2014, he was the Deputy Head of the Department, overseeing resources management issues. He also served as an Associate Dean of Engineering, looking after special projects and other new initiatives, from April 2015 to September 2015. From January 2015 to December 2019, Ricky served as the Associate Vice-President (Teaching and Learning), assisting the Vice-President and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning) in various technology-enriched learning initiatives (contents: MOOCs, blended courses; systems: educational games/apps, learning platforms; research: learning analytics, learning designs; partnership events: Asian e-Table symposium, flipped classroom symposium). Some of these initiatives were funded by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust (Smart Family-Link i-Connect System/Apps, Technology-Enriched Social Service Programs) and the UGC (SPOCs, General Education Blended-Courses Sharing).
Ricky received the Outstanding Young Researcher Award from HKU in November 2004. In January 2010, one of his journal papers was ranked #4 among top ten All-Time Most Cited Papers published in the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, based on Scopus and Google Scholar citation counts as of October 2009 (see the Editor’s Note for details). In April 2013, he got the Outstanding Reviewer Service Award from the IEEE Computer Society (under the Reviewer Appreciation Program) because as of 2013 he was the All-Time Most Prolific Reviewer for the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (see this official announcement).
Related Links
Selected Publications
- Y. K. Kwok,
Peer-to-Peer Computing: Applications, Architecture, Protocols, and Challenges, Chapman and Hall/CRC Computational Science Series, CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, June 2011, 200 pp., ISBN: 978-1-4398-0934-1. - Z. Kong and Y. K. Kwok,
“Efficient Wireless Packet Scheduling in a Non-Cooperative Environment: Game Theoretic Analysis and Algorithms,” Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, vol. 70, no. 8, pp. 790-799, August 2010. - C.-F. Law and Y. K. Kwok,
“Trust Management in Wireless Sensor Networks,” in Handbook on Sensor Networks, Yang Xiao, Hui Chen, and Frank Haizhon Li (eds.), World Scientific Publishing Co., June 2010, ISBN 978-9812837301, Chapter 19. - Y. K. Kwok,
“Trust Management in Peer-to-Peer Systems,” in The Handbook of Technology Management, vol. 3, Hossein Bidgoli (ed.), John Wiley & Sons, January 2010, ISBN 978-0470249505, Chapter 11. - M. K.-H. Yeung and Y. K. Kwok,
“On Game Theoretic Peer Selection for Resilient Peer-to-Peer Media Streaming,” IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, vol. 20, no. 10, pp. 1512-1525, October 2009.