The Faculty of Science and Technology (FST) of the University of Macau (UM) presents the 2023/2024 “Teaching Excellence Award” and “Research Excellence Award” to 4 professors yesterday (13 March). After the selection by FST management committee, the “Teaching Excellence Award” were presented to Prof Wong Fai, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science and Prof Lihu Xu, Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics. The “Research Excellence Awards” were presented to Prof Xu Qingsong, Professor in the Department of Electromechanical Engineering and Prof Xu Huanle, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science. The award aims to commend these professors for their constantly improvement in teaching and perseverance and innovation in research. They successfully enhanced the quality of teaching and research of UM, as well as setting up a role model for other academic staff and students.

Wong Fai, Derek, an associate professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science at UM. He is committed to igniting students’ passion for learning and nurturing their spirit of exploration. He actively contributes to curriculum reform, promotes professional certifications, and ensures high teaching standards. Prof. Wong covers core subjects such as natural language processing, machine translation, compiler construction, data science, and databases. He encourages students to pursue extracurricular knowledge and develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. His guided research projects have received numerous awards in local and Asia-Pacific competitions.

Lihu Xu is an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics at UM. Since joining UM in 2014, he has devoted to developing innovative approaches to mathematics education, such as incorporating real-world data analysis into statistics courses and integrating local elements into stochastic calculus.  In his courses in statistics, he devised projects where students are asked to analyze the real-world data such as the Titanic disaster survivors and the bicyclists on the Brooklyn bridge in the New York city. In the course ‘Introduction to Stochastic Calculus’, he utilized the martingale theory to elucidate why prolonged gambling leads to losses. He has also explored advanced topics like “Diffusion Models and Generative AI” in undergraduate projects. Additionally, he has popularized the theory of Nash equilibrium in secondary schools, and delivered a lecture on the pivotal role of the mathematical tiling theory in the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry at the open day event. Professor Xu’s exceptional achievements in teaching quality and inspiring students have earned him high praise.

Xu Qingsong is a professor in the Department of Electromechanical Engineering at UM. He joined the University of Macau in 2010 and is primarily engaged in research on robotics, mechatronics, and intelligent control. In addition to being a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), he has also served as an editor for several prestigious international journals and has received multiple awards, including the Macao Science and Technology Awards and Best Paper Awards at international conferences. During the pandemic, he developed Macau’s first intelligent disinfection robot, which was deployed in hospitals and government buildings. Furthermore, his research on intelligent micro/nano-manipulation robots and microgripper systems, novel magnetically controlled medical soft robots, and 3D vision perception and compliant force-controlled next-generation industrial robots have resulted in patented technologies that have generated transfer demands from multiple companies. His work has made a positive contribution to promoting the service robot industry in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and diversifying Macau’s economy.

Xu Huanle is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science at UM, where he joined in 2021. His primary research interests include cloud computing, performance optimization and resource management in large-scale distributed systems, as well as using machine learning to solve practical application problems. In recent years, Professor Xu has published over 40 academic papers in top-tier journals and conferences in the field of computer systems, including more than 20 A-class papers recommended by the China Computer Federation. He was awarded the Best Paper Award at the 2021 ACM SoCC, an international top conference on cloud computing, making his team the first from mainland China and Hong Kong and Macao to receive this award in the history of the conference. Professor Xu’s team has engaged in extensive collaboration with internationally renowned cloud computing enterprises such as Alibaba and Huawei.

FST presents the “Teaching Excellence Award” and the “Research Excellence Award” as a recognition to academic staff in making unremitting efforts in teaching and research. It reflects the pursuit of the qualities in teaching and research of the Faculty, as well as the aims of stimulating talent development, scientific progress and local competitiveness of the university.