Acting Vice President (Education)

Professor Cao Jiannong is Acting Vice President (Education), Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Professor in Data Science, Chair Professor of Distributed and Mobile Computing in the Department of Computing and Director of the Institute for Higher Education Research and Development (IHERD) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU).  He served as Head of the Department of Computing from 2011 to 2017, Dean of the Graduate School, and Head of the College of Undergraduate Researchers and Innovators (CURI) from 2021 to 2025 at PolyU.

Professor Cao’s research interests include parallel and distributed computing, wireless sensing and networking, big data and AI, and mobile cloud and edge computing.  He published six co-authored and nine co-edited books, along with over 800 papers in major international journals and conference proceedings, and holds 34 patents.  He received many awards for his outstanding research achievements.

Professor Cao is a member of Academia Europaea, a fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering, a fellow of IEEE, a fellow of the CCF, and a distinguished member of the ACM.  He served as the Chair of the Technical Committee on Distributed Computing of the IEEE Computer Society from 2012 to 2014.  In 2017, he received the Overseas Outstanding Contribution Award from the China Computer Federation.